


Race You

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: 5+1 Things, Curious but not shy Rey, Experienced Poe Dameron, F/M, Final Chapter will be M or E depending on my mood, First Five Chapters are Rated T, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, I’ve been informed that my fluff still has significant angst, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Poe Dameron Best Pilot in the Resistance, Rey is good at everything, alternating pov, competition as flirting, until now, warning: heavy flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-22 03:54:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14300220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Poe Dameron doesn't stand a chance against Rey from Jakku.Five Times Poe and Rey Raced Each Other, and One Time He Didn't Want To(First five chapters are rated T/fluff fest)





	1. Rations

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fluffiest thing I'll ever write; the idea came to me randomly two hours ago so I wrote down as much as possible and here's the first chapter, oops. 
> 
>  
> 
> Rated T but Poe still references having dirty thoughts (non explicit) and some mild cursing throughout, and references to canonical deaths throughout (spoilers possible if you haven't seen TFA or TLJ)

Poe Dameron knows right away that Rey-from-Jakku is going to be trouble.

For starters, the first time he was ever fully aware of her presence, the girl flipped through the air on the Falcon shooting at targets surrounding him and the rest of the soldiers with terrifying, impressive precision. She eventually drew the entirety of the airborne threats far away from the ramshackle V-4X-D ski speeders, and it was only partly because the newly minted Supreme Leader apparently had a Supreme Crush on her.

After he’d complimented the Jedi on her display of skill, not five minutes after they officially met, Finn whispered in his ear, “Her first time flying was five days ago.”

“What?” Poe asked, incredulous. “How?” Finn had just slapped him on the back and roared with laughter.

“She’s good at everything,” the ex-stormtrooper told him, loud enough for Rey to hear. “You get used to it.”

Rey grinned at him, not bashful in the least, just excited, beyond excited, stars-in-the-eyes, galaxy-still-fresh thrilled to have _helped,_ to have tried something new; and just like that, something very powerful, and very dangerous, clicked into place inside of him.

 _Kriff_.

Poe’s great at running the odds, so he can already call it: he’s gonna mess this up somehow.

***

Now that they’ve settled on Yavin 4, using underground networks generations old, Poe feels more in his element. Gods, he grew up here – this jungle is in his blood, the terrain and the climate and the language – it’s all his. The uncertainty that had plagued them, nauseatingly, for those tense hours aboard _The Raddus,_ the realization that he was out of his depth, the fear that he was not terribly good at giving orders or even taking them: it all washes away with the first Yavinese rainstorm.

He’s feeling more Poe-Dameron-best-pilot-in-the-Resistance than ever when he stumbles across Rey-from-Jakku crying behind some crates in storage.

“Uh,” he says by means of greeting, because of course his brain stops working around this terrifying, brilliant, talented Jedi. “You okay?”

Rey wipes her eyes on the strange fabric wrapped around her forearms and nods, smiling at him through her bleariness. “Yeah, I’m good, Commander. Thanks.”

“Just call me Poe,” he says, stupidly, rubbing his neck. Then, even stupidlier (it’s a word), he adds, “We’re both commanders, you don’t have to use my rank.”

“Oh.” Rey considers this, mouth quirking. “I didn’t know that.” She wipes her eyes again and stands up shakily. “I’m still getting used to this military thing. I don’t—” she stops, and makes a strange squeaking sound.

“What?” Poe asks her, now definitely curious at what made the formidable warrior woman in front of him make _that_ noise (he’s also curious about why she was crying, but Force, if Poe’s learned anything from his long list of sexual/romantic/platonic encounters with the females of any species, it’s _you don’t kriffing ask them why they’re upset, you wait for them to tell you_ ).

“I just – I feel bad saying it in front of you, because it’s probably so important to you.” Rey sighs and wipes her hands on her leggings, and then fiddles with the staff that’s never far from her side, nervously. It’s an endearing gesture, and Poe smiles at her, trying to reassure her that he isn’t going to judge her. It must work, because she says hesitantly, “I don’t think I want to be a soldier.”

“Oh,” Poe puts his hands on his hips, searching for a good response to that. “Oh – that’s – that’s not…” He just hadn’t considered the fact that not everyone here signed up for this the same way he had, happily, almost fourteen years ago.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Rey smiles quickly, and he can’t help it, he’s smiling back. “I’m happy to help, I just – I don’t take orders very well. I lived by myself for almost fifteen years, and there’s so many people here. I don’t think – this is just all so overwhelming, being part of the Resistance, being part of something larger than myself. It’s a lot for a nobody to take in.”

“You aren’t a nobody.” Poe frowns. “You’re a Jedi, and you’re Finn’s best friend. And, I don’t think a nobody could do that…that shit with the rocks? Back on Crait? The Force stuff?” He gestures hopelessly, already hating himself a little bit for how very uncool he’s being. The Force mumbo-jumbo never really sunk in with him; other than the Force-tree that he climbed on growing up, the Tree that’s still on the compound, about five miles from where they’re standing, he’s had almost no connection to the Force his entire life.

Rey grins, brighter than ever at him, tears completely forgotten. “Is that a compliment, Commander Dameron?” She asks, teasingly. And kriffing hells, he just told her to use his first name, but he’s always been a Force-damned sucker for a pretty person addressing him by his rank, so he almost forgets to respond, no doubt staring at her with a moonstruck look on his face.

He finds his voice, and almost immediately regrets it. “Don’t get used to it, kid,” he tells her gruffly. She seems to straighten up at the endearment, scowling, and hells, what a time to notice she’s only an inch or two shorter than him. The thought somehow makes him hot under the collar.

“I’m not a kid,” she tells him, visibly bristling. “I’m twenty-one years old.”

Oh, kriff. Kriff, kriff, kirff, Poe Dameron is a dirty old man who is going to burn in the netherworlds for an eternity because he’s – oh gods, he’s –

“I’m eleven years older than you,” he blurts out, mortified.

“That’s not that many years,” Rey challenges him. “And, I could be wrong – for all I know, I could be twenty-two! Or twenty-three!”

“You don’t know how old you are?” He asks, mystified.

Rey waves a hand dismissively at him. “Details, Dameron! It doesn’t matter how old I am. I’m not a kriffing kid.”

“Okay, okay!” Poe holds his hands up in surrender, already privately, adamantly apologizing to the Force, and the spirit of his mother, and the stars themselves for the _very_ inappropriate dream he had the other night about him, and Rey, and things he _certainly shouldn’t be thinking about a Jedi who also happens to be more than a decade younger than him._ “Maybe I just feel bad because a person eleven years younger than me shares my rank.”

“Hmm,” Rey seems to actually consider that, nose crinkling ( _adorably,_ the useless part of his brain whispers, _that’s adorable_ ). “You shouldn’t feel bad if I can do things faster than you. After all, the Force,” she gestures at her body without saying anything else, but a grin that’s downright mischievous, a grin that promises to get under his skin, spreads across her freckled face.

“So, Commander Rey,” he teases her right back, and he’s way too pleased to see her blush, “What brings you to the storage room today?”

Rey turns a less pleasant shade of red at the question, and he curses himself immediately. “I just needed to – to be by myself for a second.” Her voice is painfully soft.

Poe corrects course, desperately. “No, I get it – you just said how overwhelming everything is. I totally get it. Rey-from-Jakku needs a break from us rowdy Resistance fighters. I came out here with an excuse because I needed to get away, myself.” He’s shocked, instantly, at his candor. The anxiety that’s erupted in his chest since _The Finalizer_ is new, and tough to navigate, and has been mentioned to absolutely zero life forms (he’s only told BB-8, for gods’ sakes, and Beebee’s programmed to secrecy).

“The brave-and-talented Commander Poe Dameron needed a break?” Rey asks wonderingly. She pauses, thinking, twirling the staff idly, and Poe lets himself be distracted by the graceful movement. “What was your excuse?”

“I said that I needed to run inventory on the rations,” he laughs, embarrassed. “The squadron was just drunk enough to buy it.”

“So does that mean you actually have to fill out those damn inventory forms, so you can pretend you followed through on your excuse?” Rey asks, laughing. “Gods, I hate those kriffing things. I did exactly one last week on mechanical parts, and then I convinced a nearby T-3 to do the rest for me.”

“You did what?” Poe squawks. “How did you—?”

“The Force,” Rey says dramatically. “It’s a Jedi thing.”

“Jedi mind tricks are real?” He asks, eyes round as Corona-class frigates.

“It’s real, all of it.” Rey nods solemnly. “Want some company while you do the inventory?”

The wiser, better part of Poe Dameron thinks, _no, I really shouldn’t be in close quarters with such a pretty girl unless I want to be hopelessly distracted by us flirting – are we flirting? I hope we’re flirting – and/or that ridiculous thing you do with your nose when you’re figuring something out, and also your smile looks like starlight and that can’t be healthy for me to fixate on because the last two people I slept with are both dead, dead within twenty-four hours of each other because of some banthashit calls I made, so really, Sunshine, you’d best stay fifty parsecs away from me, at all costs._

The Poe behind the controls, the less smart Poe says, “See if you can keep up,” and winks at Rey while tossing her a holo-chart. “You do one half, I’ll do the other.”

Rey sighs after a few seconds, looking at her chart and at the boxes. Poe’s already tugged a crate towards him and has opened it – ugh, veg-meat, again – when he hears the mournful noise.

“What is it, Sunshine?” He asks, without thinking. He flinches briefly at the sudden familiarity, but his head’s already called her that, so his mouth’s onboard, _zero to Hyperspace in three seconds flat, honestly Dameron, this is why you’re single_. 

“Nothing,” Rey whispers, opening her own box and looking at it and the holo-pad she’s holding. She looks unbearably sad, her full bottom lip caught between her teeth, hazel eyes wide and – oh gods, is she going to cry again? The very idea makes his stomach lurch.

Poe sets his holo-pad down carefully and walks over to her, slowly, as if she was a skittish Rancor who could eviscerate him with any sudden movements (yeah, he’s definitely aware that she’s way the hells stronger, no matter how much smaller she is, than him, and hells, he knows he’s a pervert for finding that so damn arousing)

“Rey?” Poe asks, swallowing. “What—what’s wrong?”

“I—I’m sorry. I can’t keep up. I can’t help you,” she whispers, lip quivering, fingers fidgeting over the data log blindly as she stares into the crate. “I don’t know how to read.”

 _What._ “Oh, uhm…that’s…”

“They didn’t have school on Jakku,” Rey sniffs. “I – I learned how to write my name when I was ten, so I could sign up for shifts in the shipmines, but…” she trails off, and Poe is gutted. He’s an ass, he’s an absolute ass, how could he –

“Rey, you don’t have to –”

Rey cackles, suddenly, opening another box swiftly, and shoving the first one away from them through the Force. “I’m tooling with you, Dameron. One box down, and you haven’t even started yet. Do try to keep up.” She winks at him, honestly winks, and Poe’s thunderstruck.

“You – you were—”

“Mhm,” Rey says, fiddling with the data pad – she hadn’t been fidgeting with it, he realizes, she’d been _filling out her godsdamned paperwork while he was distracted by her fake story._ “Those boxes aren’t going to check themselves, maybe you should start?”

“That’s no fair,” Poe complains, heaving his box back towards him, his neck burning.

“Here, I’ll reset my count at zero,” Rey compromises. “And we’ll start the next box at the same time. And then we’ll see who’s faster.”

“Not everything is a competition, Sunshine,” Poe laughs at her, and he’s surprised at how carefree it is, how unstrained by stress and warfare and bloodshed. He’s laughing like he’s twenty years old again, not even two minutes after the Jedi gave him a mini-heart-attack with her embellished tragic backstory.

“Sounds like someone who thinks he’s going to lose.” Rey’s grin is full mischief now, and he gives her one equally as ornery. “Race you, Commander.”

“You’re on, Commander.” Poe nods, and they both launch themselves at their respective crates with a speed and vigor Poe had always, personally, reserved for far more entertaining activities, like flying an X-wing, or eating food, or drinking good whisky, or dancing, or having wild, acrobatic–

No. His brain’s definitely not going to go there. He won’t be distracted, no matter how pretty Rey looks with a strand of hair loose from her buns, waving in front of her sharp cheekbone, just waiting for something or someone to tuck it back into place.

She’s pulling ahead of him, already clearing her second box of inventory, and Poe shakes himself from his reverie, and begins to work twice as fast.

Rey’s victorious, in the end.

“You better get used to me kicking your ass, Poe,” she tells him cheekily before skipping away to her quarters.

He’s so damn pleased she said his first name, he doesn’t even register the rest of her barbed comment until he’s lying down in his bunk, staring at BB-8 who’s perched in its charging station.

“Well, fuck,” he mutters aloud before tossing over onto his other side.

Rey-from-Jakku was definitely going to be trouble.

 


	2. Drinking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey challenges Poe to a drinking contest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potential warning: Adults drinking, and getting pleasantly drunk. No one is harmed, and they drink in front of other people. Poe realizes Rey is drunk and gets her to go to bed. Nothing untoward happens.

Rey has never been drunk.

She’s never had any reason to trust her surroundings before, never could let her guard down; so, she’s never had so much as a sip of whiskey. When she comes across Poe, Finn, Rose, and Iolo drinking one day after dinner – BB8 sitting crossly in the corner – she accepts their invitation to sit with them. But, she quickly feels a strange disconnect from their shared happiness, the flush on their faces.

Their Force signatures feel fuzzy, Iolo clearly more far gone than any of them – and sure enough, he admits to her ten minutes after she sits down that he’s been drinking all day, not having had a shift – and Rey can sense the distance they’re putting between their thoughts and their worries and their fears.

It’s envy that she feels then, and a little strange emotion that she doesn’t have a name for, especially when she examines Poe’s signature. Poe is confusing to her on the best days: he’s so … he’s so _kind_ , but he also makes her want to kick something. He smirks a little too knowingly sometimes, she decides, looks like he knows a little too much about what’s going on in her head.

But he’s so damn nice to everyone, so she doesn’t know if he’s being nice to her because _he’s_ nice, or because he wants to be nice to _her._ And Rey really doesn’t like that uncertainty. She doesn’t like looking at him and not knowing what she’s feeling, half-happy and half-anxious enough to make her want to go to the training room and swing a lightsaber around until she’s too exhausted to spare any more thought to pretty pilots with kind eyes.

The way he’s smiling at her when she stumbles across their improvised saloon, with his golden signature hazier than she’s ever seen it due to the alcohol in his system, is making her feel even more wrong-footed than she usually does around him; she feels like his eyes are heavier on her than normal, and she worries that maybe she’s done something to offend him. After all, all the drunk men she knew on Jakku were cruel and loud, prone to violence with little to no provocation, and no matter how nice Poe Dameron is normally, he’s still an unknown quantity, which puts her on edge.

Regardless of her concern, she sits down on the proffered seat next to the commander, and when he hands her a flask, she accepts the drink, too.

“Oh,” she says, immediately regretting the tentative sip. “Oh, that’s foul.” Rey holds the flask out from her as if it had greatly offended her, her tongue slipping out of her mouth in an attempt to clear out the bad taste while she glares at the booze.

“What did they have you drinking on Jakku?” Finn asks, ruffled. “That hull stripper was mad credits, and I had to go through some strange channels to get it.”

“I didn’t drink anything on Jakku,’ Rey admits idly. The liquor was so sour, and her nose is still wrinkled from it. She can feel Poe’s eyes on her face – _kid,_ comes the echo of his voice from six weeks ago, and it makes her hackles rise because she is _not_ a kid – and she’ll die before he takes this newfound inexperience as a sign of being a _kid_. “I couldn’t afford to let my guard down for a second. Not being in control meant losing scrap, or something worse.”

“Like?” Rose asks, looking worried. “You don’t mean—” Rey shrugs, bitterly, and takes another sip.

“It’s no use crying over it now,” she says, forcing herself to smile, because she’s the Resistance’s Jedi, and she shouldn’t be upsetting the pilots and mechanics when they’re trying to take a break. “No real harm done.” In her mind, the endless stretch of tally marks above her cot looms, and the loneliness, and the fear, and the exhaustion.

Poe shifts in his seat, and when she looks at him out of the corner of her eye, she sees that he’s frowning, staring at her in a different way. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say anger was flaring in his signature. _Huh_. Poe Dameron, continued enigma.

“Well, if you don’t like the hard stuff, I did sneak in some Kashyyykan bitter berry,” Finn toes a small box towards her. There are a dozen or so bottles of bright, fizzy looking liquid. Rose tosses Rey a metal item that she quickly realizes is used to remove the top of the bottle, and she hefts the open beverage in her hand.

“Where exactly did you get this?” Rey asks, curiously. It smells better than the hull stripper, but she isn’t exactly optimistic. How do they know it isn’t poisoned, or tainted somehow?

“Chewbacca was less than forthcoming regarding his source,” Finn rubs the back of his neck. “Something about the back of a smuggling freighter.”

“If I die, Finn, stay away from my funeral,” Rey instructs. Everyone laughs as she knocks back the drink. Everyone but Poe, who’s staring at his hands.

It’s definitely better than the liquor, and Rey polishes off the bottle happily, while the conversation picks back up around her. “That was nice,” Rey laughs.

“Have another,” Finn offers.

“Just don’t drink too much,” Poe warns. “Or you’ll regret it.”

“No I won’t,” Rey scoffs. “This stuff is basically juice, right?” Finn and Poe exchange an unreadable look, and Rose grins behind her hand, giggling while she leans her head on her boyfriend’s shoulder. “What?” Rey demands.

“Nothing,” Poe assures her. “Just, maybe stick to one or two; you shouldn’t drink too quickly or too much your first time.”

“Pffffbt.” Rey may be a Gungan out of water, but she will _never_ back down from a challenge. “I think you’re just worried a little desert rat from Jakku can drink the high and mighty Poe Dameron under the table.”

“That is not—” Poe looks strangled, but Rey grins at him evilly, and she sees Rose mirror the look.

“No, I like this,” Rose says. “Twenty credits says the Jedi can drink the pilot under the table.”

“You’re on, Tico,” Finn nods. “I’ll put good money on my man. You got this, Dameron.”

“I did _not_ agree to a drinking contest,” Poe protests. “She’s – she’s—”

“She’s what, Commander?” Rey demands. “Too young? Too inexperienced? Sitting right here? Sounds to me like you’re scared.” She waggles her eyebrows at Poe and snags two bottles. “What are our terms?” She addresses Rose, who’s definitely become the ringmaster of this show. Iolo has fallen asleep against the wall, and will certainly miss out on her kicking his commanding officer’s ass. Shame. Maybe Beebee will record the ass-kicking.

“See who can finish six bottles the fastest,” Rose proclaims regally, settling back into her improvised seat made of boxes and tarps.

“I still haven’t –” Poe begins.

“Come on, Dameron,” Rey eggs him on. “Race you.”

He makes a noise not unlike a huffy Bantha, and throws his hands in the air. “Fine!” He shouts. “Fine, fine, _fine,_ let’s just gang up on Poe. Gimme that.” He sticks his hand out, and Rey slaps a bottle into his palm.

Rose counts them down, and soon Rey and Poe are ripping through their six bottles. At one point, Poe leans back and tries to tip Rey over using the toe of his boot, but she just lifts her pinkie and knocks him off his chair and onto his ass through the Force.

“Cheating!” Finn cries. “Master Cheater of the Jedi Order! That’s not how the Force works!” Rey demonstrates how exactly she feels about Finn’s proclamation with a different finger, and Poe splutters on his drink.

She beats him by about three seconds, and Rey stands, victorious, arms in the air after she chucks her last empty bottle back in the crate. Poe jumps to his feet right after, and he’s grinning at her, cheeks flushed. Rey’s laughing, and Rose is cheering, and Finn is groaning – _‘Gods, Rose, I don’t even have twenty credits, you know that’_ – and Poe is just smiling, as if she hadn’t just kicked his ass into next week, again. Rey feels very light, and very happy, and she grabs Poe by the forearms and spins him in a circle, laughing brightly. She doesn’t know why she did it, she just knows she _wanted_ to, and when they’re too dizzy to keep spinning, Rey collapses back on the ground and clutches her stomach, still roaring with laughter.

Rose and Finn have snuggled up next to each other, and Iolo has begun to drool, and Rey sees it all as she lies down on the ground and folds her hands across her stomach. Kylo Ren – because she steadfastly refuses to call him Ben, now – is just a memory, an echo in her mind, the Bond that has plagued her now fuzzed out to an unpleasant, distant thought from the giddiness of beating Poe, and the spinning, and the laughing, and the warmth she feels when she’s surrounded by her friends. It’s all very nice, and she’s sad half an hour later when Finn and Rose dismiss themselves to stumble off to their quarters, giggling.

Poe kicks Iolo awake a few minutes later, and he stumbles off to bed, which just leaves her and Poe.

“Goodnight, Commander,” she says, getting to her feet. “One question, though.”

“Yeah, little Jedi?” He asks, smiling at her. She really doesn’t think she’s imagining the way his signature flares curiously in the Force. Poe always looks at her like she means something, and she thinks she knows why it makes her so anxious. What’s he going to do when he realizes that she actually _is_ nothing? How badly is it going to hurt when he walks away, too?

Rey shakes her head in an attempt to clear it, and then giggles as she moves her head back and forth a few more times than necessary, because it feels funny.

“Could you walk me back to my room?” She remembers to ask. “I seem to have gotten lost.” It’s true, and it was true before she started drinking. She only stumbled across their drinking session because she’d taken a wrong turn.

“It’d be my genuine pleasure, Rey. Just promise me you won’t race me back, I don’t think I can run right now.” Poe winks at her and holds his arm out. She laughs at that, and tucks her hand into his elbow.

Poe Dameron is so kriffing _warm,_ she remembers as she stands close to him. He’s warm, and he smells like starlight and the forest of Yavin 4, and something else, something just as heady and intoxicating as the bitter berry, and Rey’s overwhelmed by it while they walk slowly through the darkened corridors.

Before long, they arrive at her door, and BB-8 bumps up against her legs, chirping softly in goodbye.

“Bye, clever boy,” Rey coos right back, kneeling down to pat its head. She stands back up fluidly and smiles at Poe, who’s staring at her again. She worries that she must have something on her face, and she can feel her face flushing as she goes to open her door.

“I like that you’re nice to my droid,” Poe blurts out, suddenly. Rey freezes, her hand hovering over the access pad.

“Oh,” Rey whispers. She finishes typing in the code and her door hisses open. Rey turns to look at him more closely, standing in her doorway to look at the handsome pilot. _Handsome._ That’s the word she’s been looking for. Poe Dameron is handsome, in a holo-reel star kind of way. It throws her off-balance, like he always does, so all she can say is, “It’s easy to be nice to your droid. You programmed him well.”

_You programmed him well. Dear gods, Rey, don’t ever talk again. Remember that year when you were sixteen and didn’t talk for eight months? Yeah. Maybe do that again._

Poe grins at her anyway though, a full and lazy grin that creates wrinkles in the corners of his beautiful eyes, laugh lines that Rey wants to trace with her finger. She smiles back at him, feeling like she’s in some kind of delightful feedback loop; when he smiles, she smiles, it’s easier than breathing, easier than giving in to gravity.

Poe has a wonderful smile, she decides, in a wonderful face, and maybe that’s why she keeps finding her eyes drifting to his lips. She wonders if they’d be soft. She wonders where that thought came from.

“What are you thinking about, Sunshine?” Poe asks her, a small crease between his eyebrows. Rey wants to smooth it out with her pointer finger. Or her nose. Or her lips. That's weird.

Instead, she whispers, staring at Poe’s mouth, “I don’t … I don’t know why…”

“Why what, Jedi?” Poe leans against her open doorway and smiles down at her. Rey mirrors the position, and continues to stare at his full mouth. His top lip makes the most fascinating shape, like a bow, or a dune on the horizon, or the wing of something spectacular—

“Why do I feel like this?” Rey asks.  

“How do you feel?” Poe’s eyes are wide, and brown, and very close.

“I feel,” Rey gestures at her body. “Warm.” _I always feel warm with you._ “Haven’t felt warm since Jakku, really. I feel warm and…and like there’s a bubble inside of me.” Rey hiccups, almost like it was for emphasis, which is silly because she meant she feels something erupting in her stomach when she talks to Poe, and not an actual bubble, but Poe looks immediately concerned.

“I think you’re drunk, Sunshine,” Poe tells her softly. “Let’s get you into bed.”

Somehow he maneuvers her onto her bunk, and he sets a small trash receptacle next to the bed, and a bottle of water. “In case you wake up not feeling so great,” he tells her, his own face still flushed from the drink.

“How come you’re not as…” Rey waves a hand around feebly, frowning at the unfairness.

“Experience, probably. And size. Next time, maybe don’t race me with alcohol. I have sixty pounds on you.”

“Still won,” Rey tells him gleefully. “I won.”

“You always win, Sunshine.” Poe looks strangely sad. “Beebee, stay with Rey until 0600, in case she needs anything,” he instructs his droid.

“You,” Rey says sleepily, tugging on his hand. “You should stay with me.’ Her hand curls around his fingers even as her eyes drift shut. “Poe.”

“Not tonight,” she hears him say, distantly. “Gods help me, not tonight. Sleep, sweetheart.” The last thing she’s aware of is his hand, warm and large, on her forehead. She falls asleep smiling, which is a first.

Rey’s never been drunk before; but, when she wakes up with a headache six hours later, she thinks she remembers that she liked it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is split between Rey POV and Poe POV and is called "Flight"
> 
>  
> 
> Also, each chapter takes place another month into the future (So Ch. 1 was a month after Crait, this was two months after, three will be three months after, and so on)
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


	3. Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe and Rey race in X-Wings; Poe does something silly without realizing it; Rey is sad, and gets an unwelcome visitor; Poe tries to cheer Rey up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~I hope you like minor angst and misunderstandings in your fluff~  
> POV Alternates in this chapter:  
> Poe, then Rey, then Poe again. POV change signaled by **
> 
> A Heads-Up:  
> There's some angsty bits, because what's a fic without angst? 
> 
> Ben Solo/Kylo Ren alert: he appears in this chapter and tries to lure Rey into the Dark Side, again, because he can't take a hint. (one sided Kylo/Rey, he has an obvious crush that she doesn't return)
> 
> Also: Poe Dameron is a total mess, pass it on (brief Poe/Other Character, but it's not really romantic -- at least in his mind)

Today’s mission was a rousing success: Black and Dagger Squadrons worked together to pull off an op taking out a stationary First Order base, some ten thousand klicks from Yavin 4. The base is eliminated, and everyone – _every single pilot_ – is returning in one piece.

They’re all overcome with excitement when they drop out of Hyperspace – kriff, Poe can’t remember the last time they ran a mission and didn’t lose anyone, and it gives him more reason to foster this bubble of tenuous hope that’s been building inside of him the last three months – and they fly low over the surface of Yavin.

They enter atmo a solid ten minute flight out from the base, not wanting to disturb the tribes of Woolamanders and other native species that have taken up residence near the Grand Temple, and the two squadrons fly in non-combat formation back. Poe tries not to be distracted by the knowledge that Rey’s flying a few hundred feet above him, not in any formation, but gods: she was _magnificent_ today.

“Great flying, guys,” Poe says, trying to force down the _especially you, Sunshine_ that threatens to spill out of his mouth.

“Was that – was that a _compliment_?” Snap mock-gasps.

“I think it was! Quick, someone call ahead to Medical and tell them that Commander Dameron must have sustained a head injury.” Kare laughs, and she’s joined by the other pilots.

Poe rolls his eyes and switches communications over to base, briefly. “Black Squadron and Dagger Squadron making final approach towards ground, requesting permission to land.”

“Permission granted, Commander,” Connix chirps back. “Wheels to ground in eight minutes at current speed.”

“Roger that, see you soon.” Poe flips the control and returns his full attention to his own bird. “Good work today, little buddy.”

[And to you, Master Poe!] Beebee responds. [My scans indicate zero damage to Black One.]

“Good thing too, or our Jedi would have my head,” Poe laughs. She had rebuilt his X-wing herself two months ago, a demonstration of skill that definitely, definitely was not blindingly, distractingly attractive. “How’d everyone else do?”

The rest of the pilots respond in appropriate order, and he’s deeply pleased to hear that very few of the ships had taken on any hits. A ridiculously successful mission: the Force must have been with them, and there’s a clear reason why.

“What about you, Commander Rey?” Poe asks nervously. “How’s Knight One?”

“She’s doing just fine, handled great,” Rey reports. “But, I can’t help but wonder how she flies over solid terrain.”

“What do you mean?” Poe asks, worried that he knows exactly where this is going.

“Race you to the hangar, Dameron,” Rey challenges him.

“Sorry, Commander, I hardly think that’s appropriate,” Poe answers, heat flushing down his neck at the way her voice sounds in his ear, low, lilting and just the right amount of teasing. _Kriff. Keep your eyes on the horizon, Dameron._

“Tip-yip-shit!” Iolo calls out.

“Captain Arana, focus on your own squadron,” Poe snaps.

“Nah, I think the captain’s right, Commander,” Jessika crows. “You know you can’t beat the Jedi back.” 

“Lieutenant Pava,” Poe begins, but he’s cut off by the chanting of every pilot on the line –

“Do it, do it, do it!”

“You gotta be karking kidding me,” Poe groans.

“My stars, Commander.” Rey’s back on the comms. “Such language, and from an officer, too.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Poe mutters. “We doing this, Jedi?”

He sees Knight One pull up next to him, ionic engines already engaged. “On your count, Arana,” Rey commands.

“Alrighty, on three," Iolo says. "And stay low, near the trees. First one to enter the hangar wins, if only because Organa will murder us if you two park on top of each other.” Poe laughs despite the building adrenaline in his gut, already punching in the code to accelerate. He can hear Beebee working meticulously, prepping the engines. “Three, two -- one!”

They shoot forward, Beebee screaming in exhilaration, and Poe fights back a laugh of his own. He’d learned to fly here – an advantage he didn’t want to point out to Rey or the others – and it feels almost like a homecoming to soar over the trees at breakneck speed. He can hear Shara scolding him for not pulling up on the thruster while he rockets past a natural lake, the water’s surface no doubt exploding from the reverse pressure of his engines, but Rey’s showing no signs of slowing down, so neither does he.

“Come on, Sunshine, don’t hold back,” Poe shouts. He regrets it, immediately – now everyone on the channel knows his nickname for her.

“In your dreams, Dameron,” Rey laughs. “You underestimate my power.”

[Master-Poe] Beebee says, quickly. [I have urgent information regarding updates Rey, status: Champion-of-All made to Knight One’s engines].

“What?” Poe frowns. “What did you just call her?”

[Finn, status: Best-Buddy encouraged me to change her designation] Beebee explains. [But, Master-Poe, I must insist you listen to the list of modifications made to Knight One! She can -]

BB-8 doesn’t have to explain, because suddenly Rey’s ship pulls back, almost violently, and when Poe twists around, he can see her execute an impossibly tight barrel-roll.

“Let me show you how it’s done, Commander,” Rey laughs wildly before accelerating impossibly quickly, over Black One.

“What the ever-loving fuck?” Poe gapes at Knight One, pulling ahead in a way that he knows he could never catch up with. He urges his ship forward faster all the same, shouting at Beebee to activate thrusters to full capacity.

“I may have tinkered with the engines,” Rey admits, still ahead of him, out of reach. Poe tips his controls forward more, console practically shaking from the strain. “This is my first time testing it out.”

“Don’t kriffing tell me that!” Poe scolds. “Gods, Rey, is that even safe?”

“Hmmm,” he hears her considering the question. “Probably not, but it's worth it for the look on your face.”

The temple looms ahead of them, and Rey’s still not slowing down. “How do you know what my face looks like?” He challenges her, trying to catch enough drift to speed up, even into his dive towards the hangar entrance. She’s maybe a hundred feet ahead of him now. Tooling with him, he realizes.

“The Force,” Rey teases.

She zips into the hangar maybe two tantalizing seconds before him, and they both yank up on their braking mechanisms at the same time, decelerating rapidly in the short distance before the actual bay.

Rey parks first, and she’s already leaping out, canopy window thrust open, when Poe’s wheels touch down.

“That was reckless,” Poe rebukes her, as soon as his own canopy’s open. “How did you know your engine wasn’t going to –”

“That’s a funny way to say congratulations,” Rey teases him, smiling at him from down on the ground. Her face is flushed, her pert nose wrinkled at him, and Force, she looks so farkling good in that flightsuit – the one she borrowed from him, he remembers with a groan, he was the pilot closest in height to her, and look, she’s had to cinch it with a piece of rope to make it fit her tiny waist, and gods, he’s only human, he can’t handle this much temptation, he can’t –

Poe forgets why he was angry.

“Come down here and congratulate me properly,” Rey tells him, hands on her hips while she grins at him.

“Wilco,” Poe laughs, trying to will away his sudden, very powerful, physical reaction to her undeniable beauty. _Think about the T-65 training manual,_ he coaches himself as he disengages Beebee from its station. _Think about cold water, and veg-meat, and Rancors._ He’s calmed slightly when he stands to climb down the ladder.

The rest of the pilots have flown into the hangar by now, and they’re all greeted by the applause of the techs, mechanics, and grounded squadrons.

Rey beams at him, and then at everyone else, as various members of the Resistance rush forward to greet her. Poe smiles at how happy she looks, hoping that finally she’s realizing how she isn’t a nobody here, that she has a home here, and the thought makes him overwhelmingly emotional. _This is your home,_ he wants to say to her.

He wants to whisper it in her ear, when it’s just the two of them, because he knows she still gets exhausted from crowds, no matter how much she likes people; he wants to take her hand and lead her away from the hangar, find some private corner of base so he can hold her, and tell her: _This was my home, when I was a child, and now I’m here again. I want this to be your home, here with me. We’re your home, we’re your family._

He’s delayed in pulling her away when Jessika walks up to him, grinning. She grabs his collar and tugs him down; Poe rolls his eyes, remembering their five-year tradition, and he accepts the kiss laughingly.

It’s their go-to celebration of being alive, and Poe doesn’t question it. Jess doesn’t see him that way, and he doesn’t see her that way, either – not since she told him pointblank a half year after meeting him that she doesn’t see _anyone_ that way, she just likes to kiss people sometimes – and after all, a quick, triumphant kiss helps to ground both of them physically after being in the air, knocking at Fate’s door for solid hours.

Poe breaks away from Jess, still laughing, and he turns to pull Rey over to him, the part of him controlled by the rush of adrenaline hoping that maybe she’ll let him kiss her, too; but he’s startled to see the sweet-faced Jedi retreating through the doors, the back of her neck reddened. Poe’s dragged into a ferocious group hug, and he’s stopped from sprinting after her the way he wants to.

He figures he’ll catch up with her during debrief, but Rey doesn’t make an appearance.

After the meeting, Leia catches him frowning at the door. She smacks him upside the head. “What was that for?” He asks, rubbing his head, mystified.

“If you don’t know, I’m not telling you,” Leia tells him primly. Then, she sniffs, indignant. “I’m fifty-five years old, and a widow. You think I’d be done with idiot pilots by now.” He still doesn’t get it, but he rarely understands Leia. He’s too afraid of her to ask for clarification.

Poe doesn’t see Rey at dinner, either. He tries not to let it show, how much it worries him, how much it bothers him, how much he misses her.

**

Rey stares in horror as Jessika pulls Poe down for a ferocious kiss, the commander laughing and raising his hands above his shoulders as the beautiful pilot presses her mouth to his.

“ _How do you know if you want to kiss someone_?” Rey recalls her ridiculous, naïve question to Rose, about a month ago. Rose had laughed gently, and then walked her through a number of scenarios. Eventually, after Rey begged her, Rose had also given her a brief overview of humanoid sexuality, her ears and cheeks tinged bright pink while she demonstrated several actions with mechanical parts. Her friend even walked with her to get a birth control implant from Dr. Kalonia. Rey had appreciated the knowledge and support greatly, and thanked her blushing friend effusively, not really understanding why anyone would be embarrassed about physical intimacy.

She feels embarrassed now, though. She feels embarrassed, and stupid, and young. _I thought that maybe –_ no. She didn’t actually think that the decorated commander, the hero, the best pilot in the Resistance, the handsomer-than-a-holo-reel-star Poe Dameron would want to kiss her, just because she wanted to kiss him. She had hoped, and hope was—

 _Stupid_.

Rey flees from the hangar bay, not even going to the afternoon debrief. She thinks she’ll catch hell for it later, probably from Leia, but then dinnertime comes and goes, and Leia doesn’t appear. Rey remembers, then, that Leia’s Force-sensitive, and can probably feel the misery that’s taken over her heart and mind.

After hours of tossing and turning, she falls asleep uneasily around 21:00.

Of course Kylo Ren picks tonight to make a reappearance. She’s only felt him as a distant presence the last few months, but he must have sensed her vulnerability today.

He’s not in her dream initially. She’s thrown towards him after seeing what feels like an infinite series of kisses between Poe and Jess, over and over again, stretching on for eternity, not unlike the nightmarish vision from the mirrored cave on Ahch-To. “Stop!” She screams, slamming her fist out at the mirage. “Stop it!”

 _“Stop what?”_ Kylo’s voice appears behind her as a whisper, and then echoes strangely, getting louder and more coherent. Suddenly, they appear to each other in a neutral zone, a grey area lit by an unseen source.

“Nothing,” Rey snaps, folding her arms over her middle. “Go away.” Of course her lightsaber didn’t choose to appear with her in this liminal space. Of-fucking-course.

Kylo sees where her mind went because this kriffing Bond between them lets him see into her thoughts, always, and he smirks. “ _Always the warrior, a true Jedi,”_ he intones. Rey flinches, the phrasing too close to Snoke’s, too close to the throne room where all she had known for unbroken minutes was agony and intrusion. Kylo sees that, too, and looks oddly apologetic, hands raised in supplication. _“I would never hurt you, Rey, not like that._ ”

“You already hurt me,” Rey says. “You turned your back on me. You chose to remain Kylo Ren.”

“ _That’s not how I remember it.”_ Kylo’s smile is sad, the scar on his cheek quirking slightly under the weight of it.

“Well, it’s what happened. You could still choose differently, though. Come back to the Light, please. _Please._ ” Rey’s eyes fill with tears – she doesn’t think she can take another rejection from him, but she has to try, she has to save him.

 _“Save me?”_ Kylo’s smile twists back into a smirk, and she hates it, she really hates it. _“Maybe I need to save you. You were sad tonight, scavenger. Your soul cried out into the Force, so I came to you. Why were you so upset?”_

“Don’t pretend like you care,” Rey says waspishly. “Don’t pretend like you suddenly give a damn about me.” Her hands clench into fists at her sides, and she forces herself to breathe deeply, to release her anger.

 _“I’ve given a damn about you since I saw you on Takodana, Rey,”_ he insists earnestly. Kylo Ren is many things, she knows, but he is not a liar. Her stomach churns almost unbearably, which almost makes her laugh. She isn’t even physically here, and he makes her physically uncomfortable. It’s worlds different from the way Poe makes her stomach feel; _he_ makes her stomach feel like it’s erupted into flocks of Sriluurian butterflies.

Of course Kylo sees that, too.

“ _Ah. Commander Poe Dameron, poster boy of the Resistance,”_ Kylo nods, something unreadable flashing in his eyes. _“I knew him for a time, growing up. I liked him myself, when I was weaker, more foolish. Although, I don’t think I liked him the same way you do.”_

“Stop it, Kylo,” Rey begs. “Get out of my head.” The memory of the dream before erupts in her mind without bidding. She doesn’t think Kylo pulled it forward, but she hates thinking of it in front of him, hates exposing her weakness, all the same. Poe kissing the lieutenant, the lieutenant kissing Poe, eternally.

 _“Oh, but he wants another,”_ Kylo looks sad, inexplicably. He must have sensed her own strange grief. “ _That’s enough to make anyone angry.”_

“I’m not angry, he can make his own choice,” Rey says, for Kylo’s sake, and her own. “He doesn’t want me, but that isn’t a crime. It doesn’t matter if he wants someone else. It doesn’t. He’s still kind, and he’s still my friend. I don’t discount that, at all.” _Even if I wish it were different, even if I wish he wanted me._

 _What would he want with you? He’s a hero, and you’re nobody._ It’s not Kylo’s voice that says that: it’s a strange hybrid of his voice, her voice, and Poe’s. It’s horrible, and she claps her hands over her ears.

“Stop it,” she mutters, trying to pull away from the vision entirely, trying to wake up. “I’m not a nobody, I’m not.”

 _“I’ve told you before: you aren’t a nobody to me, darling girl.”_ Kylo reaches out to her – or is it Ben? He looks so gentle, tonight – and his hand hovers in the space between them. She finds herself reaching back, involuntarily.

“ _Rey_ ,” her name is a caress in his mouth. “ _I would never, ever leave you. You would be by my side always. You should be at my side. Join me, and never be lonely again. I see your fear, and I know it well, because it is my fear. We've both been abandoned too many times, by the people who should love us.”_

“You’re wrong,” Rey startles backwards, tripping over nothing in this strange, empty place. “No, your mother loves you, Ben, she still loves you.” Tears begin to fall from her eyes, her heart breaking in a new way for the man in front of her, for herself. In her unconscious state, the pain is more unbearable than it was when she's awake, no way to stop it, no way to combat it.

“ _You still aren’t listening to me, scavenger,”_ Ben’s face briefly twists in frustration before smoothing back out, handsome once more. _“Listen to me. There is no one else in the galaxy for us, no one who could understand us the way we understand each other. It’s why we’ve been so lonely. But we don’t have to be alone anymore. You felt it, back on Ahch-To. We’re supposed to do this, together.”_

“Not like this,” Rey shakes her head, sobbing. “Gods, Ben, not like this.”

 _“Rey,”_ Ben looks impossibly young now, more like the young man at Luke’s temple, vulnerable, open, a tear falling from his eye. “ _Sweet one.”_ She lets him take her hand, briefly, closing her eyes against the torrent of his emotions – wild joy, _passion,_ desperation, desire _—_ that pours through their Bond, making her tears flow harder from its terrifying intensity.

“Goodbye, Ben,” Rey chokes out, yanking back through the Force violently.

 _“I’ll destroy him.”_ His vowed threat is the last thing that descends over her before she exits the vision..

Rey wakes up, alone, in her bed. She’s still crying, and she doesn’t stop until Yavin rises over the horizon.

**

Poe spots Rey at breakfast the next day, and he’s immediately worried when he sees her push her food around her tray, obviously melancholic. She doesn’t look up when Finn sits down next to her, and Poe, from his position on the wall, pauses in his conversation with Snap to examine her profile.

Finn’s talking to her animatedly, and Rey’s nodding along, but her back is slouched, and she twitches when Finn slaps a hand on her back. She excuses herself when Rose sits down, and Finn continues talking while Rey walks quickly out of mess – Rose looks after her worriedly, and when she locks eyes with Poe, who also stared at Rey during her retreat, he’s shocked to see the tiny mechanic scowling at him.

 _How many short, terrifying women can yell at me in twenty-four hours?_ Poe thinks, wonderingly. He beats it out of mess before Rose can come over and scream at him, or zap him with that scary mecha-prod she’s always carrying.

When he asks Finn about it an hour later, Finn shrugs. “Rey was probably just tired,” he says easily. “She trained really hard before breakfast, I saw her practicing her forms at 05:00.” Poe nods, hoping he’s right, deciding that he’ll ask her himself later on.

Poe doesn’t see Rey for another few hours, when they’re leaving a flight-sim at the same time, everyone heading to lunch.

“Good flying,” he says, awkwardly, having jogged to catch up to her. “Today, and yesterday, that is.”

“Thanks.” Rey doesn’t look over at him, and his stomach clenches at how clipped the response is.

They walk in silence for a dozen or so yards, and then Poe talks, because he always has to fucking talk, and he can’t stand this cloying distance that seems to have sprung up between them.

“Race you back to mess?” He asks, smiling at her, praying that she’ll smile back. To his knowledge, Rey hasn’t smiled all day, not at him, not at Finn, not at Rose.

“Not today.” Her answer is soft, not unkind, but not welcoming either. Her shoulders are rigid, and when he leans in to look at her face more closely, her hair hanging strangely loose today out of her normal style, he sees massive circles under her red and swollen eyes. _Krffing hells, she’s been crying._ The realization that neither he nor Finn had any idea she was this sad breaks his fucking heart, it really does – she’s so strong, but who does she turn to when she’s feeling weak? Rose?

Poe hates himself for how badly he wishes that it could be him, that he could be the one she chooses to lean on.  _But what could a scruffy pilot possibly have to offer her?_

“C’mon, Sunshine,” he wheedles. “You’ll feel better after you kick my ass.”

She smiles finally, finally, but there’s no mirth to it, her eyes still distant and full to the brim with misery. “Excuse me, Commander Dameron. I have to go speak with General Organa.” He doesn’t miss Rey’s hand on her lightsaber as she walks away stiffly in a different direction.

Beebee chirps down at his feet: [Rey, status: Champion-of-All does not look well today, Master Poe].

“No, she doesn’t, buddy,” Poe agrees, looking sadly after Rey.

[My sensors indicate that the precipitous drop in her mood began at 18:38 yesterday upon the culmination of your race, after your embrace with Lieutenant Pava.]

“Why would that have anything to do with her mood? Correlation, causation, buddy. We talked about this.” Poe’s stomach churns anxiously. Poe foolishly, stupidly thinks for a second that maybe she’d been jealous – but she’s a fucking Jedi, for gods’ sakes, why would she be jealous of anything? It had just been a kiss, after all, a tradition of his and Jess’s, nothing else. Any of the pilots could tell Rey that.

_Stop it asshole, why would she even care who you kiss?_

[It does not compute that a man with so many sexual partners would understand so little of romance] BB-8 reprimands after several moments of silence.

“That's a little judgmental, buddy. You’ve been talking to Threepio too much,” Poe accuses. “I oughta re-boot you.” Beebee trills in irritation and rolls away, but not before slamming ungraciously into Poe’s legs. “Kriff!” He swears, rubbing his knee. “That hurt, Beebee!” Beebee speeds down the hallway, clearly following Rey towards Central Command.

Poe stands alone in the hallway, racking his brain for a way to make their Jedi smile.

***

It takes some serious finagling, and more than a little begging to Finn, Rose, and Beebee, but Poe thinks he’s figured something out.

Rose distracts Rey before dinner, and Finn grumbles under his breath the entire time they work side by side, but Poe’s happy with the outcome at 18:00 when they finish, both sweating slightly.

“You owe me, flyboy.” Finn jabs a finger under his nose. “You owe me, big time.” Poe swats his hand away and laughs. He really does owe him, though.

Dinner passes by peacefully, as peacefully as it can when Rey still refuses to meet his eyes, and Poe offers to clear everyone’s tray. When they leave, Rose chatters away at the Jedi while Poe awkwardly walks behind them, Finn jabbing him with his elbow every five seconds, waggling his eyebrows absurdly as his eyes flicker between Rey’s back and Poe’s face.

“Stop it,” Poe hisses.

“Poe has a crrr-uuuuush,” Finn teases. Poe slaps him on the back of the head, and the sound attracts Rose and Rey’s attention.

“What’s going on back there?” Rey asks, a small smile appearing on her face, and the sight of it makes Poe's heart skip a beat.

“Nothing,” both men answer at the same time. When the girls look forward again, Poe and Finn shove each other mercilessly but silently, half-wrestling down the length of the hallway.

“This is us!” Rose announces at the door to the quarters she shares with Finn. They’d both been more than happy to alleviate some of the pressure of housing the Resistance in a base designed to be temporary. “Goodnight!” She opens the door and yanks Finn into the room without another word.

Rey shakes her head, laughing, and continues walking down the hall. Poe follows her, unsure if she wants him, but so very desperate to see her reaction to his maybe-not-well-thought-out plan.

“How are you feeling, Commander?” He asks, anxiously.

“I’m fine, thanks, Poe.” His heart hurts slightly less, the tightness in his chest loosening at the sound of his name in her perfect mouth. Poe wants to apologize to her, but he isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for: should he start with, _Jess is just a friend,_ or, _sorry for assuming you’d even want to kiss me._ He has almost no idea of what to say, which is a rarity for him: he’s been accused of being silver-tongued more than once, after all. But Rey always knocks him off-kilter: it’s exciting and maddening at the same time.

“Well, here I am,” she laughs nervously, hand on her door's access panel.

“Yeah,” Poe nods, and clears his throat. She gives him a weird look, no doubt wondering why he’s still hanging around – _gods, just let me stay around you a little longer, Sunshine, I promise, that’s all I really want from you, a little bit of your time, any of your extra attention, please don’t shut me out again_ – and then opens her door.

The gasp of shock was expected, but still triggers something deep and powerful inside of him. He wonders what else could inspire such a thrilling noise from Rey; he scolds himself immediately for wondering that.

Rey walks into her room slightly, and spins in a circle. He can see her hazel eyes wide, absolute delight written on her lovely face. Gods. If he could make her look like that every day for the rest of his life – it’d be a life well spent.

“Poe!” She exclaims, her hand in front of her mouth when she turns to face him. “Did you?” She doesn’t finish the question, and Poe shuffles his feet.

“Yeah, Sunshine,” he says, bashfully. “Beebee mentioned that you liked flowers.”

BB-8 had actually given him the following wealth of information: it had spotted a dried flower reverently laid out in her AT-AT on Jakku (at which point sympathy had ripped through Poe for the loneliness of her former life); it had overheard her remarking, overjoyed, to Han Solo that she had never seen green like Takodana before; and it had witnessed her excitement at flora and fauna at every turn on their brief adventure together.

So, yeah, Poe knows that Rey likes flowers, which is why he’d spent the afternoon combing through the nearby jungle with Finn, finding every possible variation of flower and bloom in a quarter mile radius. He had then brought them back here to her room – which Beebee had reluctantly picked the lock to – filling it to the brim with vases full of the blossoms, some of them four feet tall, flowers covering every available surface, crowding the corners of her bunk.

“Why?” Rey asks, eyes still round and amazed, a hesitant but gorgeous smile playing at her mouth. _Kriffing damnit,_ but she looks so beautiful surrounded by the flowers, and Poe wishes he’d had the presence of mind to bring a cam, to capture this image, so he’ll never forget it. He doesn’t actually think he could ever forget this, but gods, he wishes he could record it permanently.

She’s still waiting for an answer. “Because,” Poe shrugs. _Because they’re pretty, and you’re pretty. Because I feel like I messed up, and I knew I was going to mess up, and I’m sorry that I messed up. Because you deserve nice things._ He goes with some of the truth: “I thought you were having a bad day, and I wanted to cheer you up. Did it work?’

Rey bursts into tears, which is perhaps the opposite of what he was hoping for. “Aw, shit,” he says, rubbing his neck, “I didn’t want to make you –” He’s stopped from finishing the apology when Rey lurches forward and hugs him around the neck.

Poe settles his hands on her waist and feels something slide into place, something that’s been missing even since before _The Finalizer,_ before he shot his rep to pieces, before he lost friends and loved ones to his shitty calls. His arms slide to wrap all the way around her, and he marvels at how right it feels.

Poe holds Rey tightly, her nose pressed into his neck behind his ear; he holds Rey-from-Jakku here on Yavin 4, and he feels like he’s definitely, undeniably, finally found his way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Pokes finger at fic* "Where did...this semblance...of a plot...where did this...angst....come from?"
> 
> Chapter 4: "Hand-to-Hand" (let's up the pining, and a return of the angst to bring our two friends even closer together)  
> Chapter 5: "On Foot"  
> Chapter 6: TBD, but god, we're gonna have to up that rating to M/E, if y'all want that smut (it's written, and #oh#my)


	4. Hand-to-Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe goes on a mission and Rey gives him a gift; Rey and Poe train together, and Poe learns something startling about the Jedi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight angst b/c Kylo Ren is still a thing, other than that, we're still in fluff town.

After weeks of awkwardness and avoided one-on-one time with Poe Dameron, Rey finds herself helping Black Squadron prepare before they depart on a three week mission. She’s assigned to Black Three, which means she’s assigned to Jessika Pava.

She has to be imagining how awkward this is. At least she’s not assigned to Captain Arana’s squadron – she’s been avoiding him, too, since he asked her on a date two weeks ago. Rey’s pretty sure she squeaked out a manageable rejection, and she doesn’t think he’s the kind of person to hold it against her, but still. People are hard enough without throwing awkward romantic shit in the middle of it all.

Now, Jess is kicking her feet around while Rey runs preliminary reports on the X-Wing. The silence is a little crushing, and Rey can’t take much more of it, which is strange, considering she spent weeks, months, on end without talking to anyone as a child and teenager.

So.

“It must be nice to be able to go on missions with Poe,” Rey offers to Jess as she checks her engine.

“Yeah, he’s a great commander,” Jess says idly, scanning a holo-report. “You’ve been on missions with him though, so you know Dameron’s great under pressure. A little cocky, sure, but it usually pays off.”

“Yeah,” Rey says, sadly.

“Maybe you should go say goodbye to him after you’re done running the engine exam.” Jess winks at Rey, who is absolutely startled by the implication.

“Uh…why?” Rey squeaks, wrench freezing in mid-air. _Oh gods, she knows I have a crush on her boyfriend. She knows I have a more-than-crush on her boyfriend._

“I think he might want you to,” Jess grins mischievously. “And he’s always in a better mood after you talk to him, we’ve all noticed. It’ll make our lives easier.”

“No!” Rey half-shouts, and then lowers her voice. “It’s not—no. No, Poe is my friend, I’m – isn’t he your boyfriend?”

Jess stares at her as if she’d suddenly grown lekku. “What?”

“You—” Rey gestures in the air helplessly with the hydrospanner. She types in the final code to the program, and hums quietly when it comes back as all systems clear. It gives her something to do while she thinks of what she wants to say, but honestly she isn’t much better off for waiting. “Um. You? Kissed? After we got back from that mission four weeks ago?”

Lieutenant Pava throws her – majestic, flowing, princess-like – hair back and laughs, white teeth flashing in her tan face. “Oh gods, that’s—” She stops laughing when she looks at Rey’s face, and Rey prays to the Force for serenity, for calm, for detachment, for any of that useful Jedi-stuff she’s supposed to have mastered by now. “Oh Rey, honey, it’s not like that at all.” Her voice is sweet, kind, but not condescending. Maybe a little too knowing.

“But you kissed,” Rey insists. “I saw that. You kissed each other, so I thought you were dating. Rose…Rose told me people who like each other kiss each other.” _To be fair, she only told me that after I explained to her how I felt looking at Poe._

“Oh, uhm, that’s definitely true.” Jessika sits down on a lowered hydrolift awkwardly, and pats the spot next to her. Rey sits, wondering if Jess is going to shoot her, if she’s actually dating Poe and this is a ploy to take out the awkward, gangly desert rat who makes eyes at her boyfriend, but all Jess says is: “I think – I think that’s what people say should happen. But I’ve known Poe for forever, and we really trust each other; and, believe me, I don’t trust a lot of people.” Rey’s startled by a surge of _something_ powerful in the Force, rippling out from Jess, whose body language remarkably doesn’t change from the sudden rise of emotion in her.

“Anyway,” Jess continues, blinking away whatever sadness is building in her eyes from a clearly potent memory, “We grew to trust and like each other – as colleagues. We started that whole thing as a joke years ago, seriously, and we just – we just kiss each other after successful missions. Like a ‘hey, wow, we’re alive, fuck yeah,’ kind of thing. Poe doesn’t think of me that way, and I,” Jess shrugs. “I just don’t think about sex, at all, really, or what most people consider ‘dating.’ I don’t need it or want it.”

“Oh.” Rey considers this information. “That’s interesting, is there a name for that?”

“I’m asexual,” Jess tells her, smiling. “I think some people are nice enough to want to be close to, and I like to snuggle, and sometimes kiss, but I just don’t really get into sex stuff. Doesn’t appeal.” Jess shrugs easily, and smiles at Rey again before leaning over to tug on her braid. “And ‘sides, if I was going to go for someone, it’d be _you_ over the commander.”

Jess winks roguishly at Rey, the expression shockingly similar to the one Poe so often adopts, and then shouts, “Hey, Dameron, the Jedi wants to talk to you.” Poe looks up from where he’s digging around in Black One, and signals that he’ll be right over, face flushed from whatever he was working on.

“What?” Rey hisses. “Jess, what are you doing?”

“I got a bet, pretty Jedi,” Jess leaps to her feet and spins around to walk backwards, towards her ship. “If you two nerf-herders kiss before Life Day, Snap owes me fifty credits.”

_There’s a bet? Am I that obvious?_

“I don’t know how to kiss,” is the idiot thought that slips out of Rey’s mouth.

Jess grins at her, maniacally. “You’ll figure it out. I’m sure he’ll be happy to be your test pilot.” She clambers up her ladder and starts to argue colorfully with her assigned droid – something about Lieutenant Pava makes all the astromechs on base terrified of working with her – and abandons Rey.

Ass.

Rey straightens up, fidgeting with her leggings, when she sees Poe start to walk over. She shoots a scowl at Jess, who’s still merrily fighting with the R2 unit on her X-Wing, and then clears her throat, searching for something to say.

“What did you need, Sunshine?” Poe asks when he’s within earshot. His face flushes, slightly, in a way that Rey doesn’t think she would notice without the Force on her side. “Sorry. Commander. What do you need, Commander?”

“Uhm,” Rey says. It’s ridiculous, really, that she tried to fight Supreme Leader Snoke with nothing more than a bad attitude and a stolen Sith lightsaber, but a good-looking pilot she’s had a hundred conversations with asks her a question, and she can only say ‘uhm.’

“Rey?” Poe asks, looking concerned now. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Rey whispers, standing up as steadily as she can. “Here, I – I wanted you to have this. For good luck.” And, true enough, she’s been carrying this around for weeks, since before she saw him kiss Jess – which apparently, was not a big deal at all, and now she feels silly for assuming all kisses were equal – and she couldn’t think of an appropriate time to give it to him. Rey digs around her pocket before fishing out what she brought back, after Ilum, two months ago, when she’d left for a week, only a few days after the first time she’d gotten drunk.

Rey grabs his wrist and slaps the item in his palm before she can overthink it. She wraps her arms around her middle the second her hand is empty. “I – I brought it with me from my solo mission.” Poe doesn’t say anything – he’s still staring at his palm. “It…it seemed like it was supposed to go to you.”

Poe examines the item closely, eyes wider than star systems. “Rey, is this what I think it is? I can’t— I couldn’t possibly—"

She doesn’t wait for the end of the statement: instead, she hugs him tightly for less than two seconds, whispering, “Be safe, Poe. Come back.” She doesn’t even give him enough time to return the hug, whether or not he wanted to; then she leaves as quickly as she can, almost jogging to the bay doors, escaping his questions.

He’ll be back in three weeks. She can deal with the embarrassment then.

**

“What’d she give you, Commander?” Jess calls down to him, lazily, legs draped over the side of Black Three.

Poe hefts the item in his hand, well aware that his neck is burning red. “Don’t worry about it, Pava.”

“Was it a kiss? Because you need to tell us if it was a kiss,” Jess shouts, loud enough for the rest of the squadron to hear.

“Gods, tell me she didn’t kiss you,” Snap groans. “I need you both to cool your jets for like, three more months, so I can win the pool.”

“C’mon, Dameron, tell us!” Kare grins from her perch on the outside of Snap’s X-Wing. “What did she give you?”

Poe feels his face flush. “Switch off, all of you,” he snaps. “And don’t ever fucking talk about her like that, again. You may not respect me, but you’ll damn well respect her. She’s a Jedi. You’d do well to not forget that.” _Because I sure fucking can’t._

“Whoa, sorry, Commander.” Kare looks legitimately apologetic, but the prickling in his spine doesn’t go away. He’s still kicking himself for not dragging Rey out of the hangar and kissing her himself – that was the closest they’ve been for weeks, now, and he wasted the opportunity – and that might have been part of the reason why he responded so angrily to his squadron’s teasing. _Part_ of the reason.

The other part is _definitely_ because he’s well aware that Rey, Jedi Master, all-around-perfect person, probably doesn’t want to kiss a scruffy pilot with a hot temper and a shocking history of insubordination and mutiny.

He shrugs and snarls that they all better be ready for wheels up in less than five, before he strides back to Black One and finishes up his pre-flight checks.

“Commander?” A voice pipes up from the floor, a minute later.

Poe sighs. “Yes, Lieutenant?” When he looks out from the cockpit, he sees Jessika shuffling her feet awkwardly.

“Sorry for teasing you. You should know, we all respect you.” She looks up at him, heavily. “You’ve more than earned it, Poe. We’d follow you anywhere.”

Great, now he’s blushing for a completely different reason. “That’s—that’s good of you to say, Jess.”

“And we all respect Rey, too. We really like her. Especially me.”

 _Not as much as me,_ he thinks heavily. “Good to hear, Pava.” He fidgets with his console, and then sighs again. Jess hasn’t moved, and he has a feeling she has more she wants to say. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

“You should know –” Jess coughs, and then shifts her eyes around to see if anyone’s eavesdropping. “She thought we were dating.”

“What?” Poe blinks in confusion, and stares at Jess. “Why would she – why would she?”

“Because we kissed,” Jess shrugs. “She thought only people who were in relationships kissed.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t know what to do with this information, and gods, his head should be on flying, on the mission, not on pretty girls from the desert.

“Oh.” Jess’s normal, ornery smile is back. “Yeah, ‘oh.’ She seemed really sad before I corrected her. Much more cheerful after.”

“Why did you tell me that?” Poe shouts down at her, but Jess is already walking back to Black Three, shaking her head and laughing.

“I think you know why.”

Poe grumbles under his breath about rude pilots for a few seconds and then focuses on his X-Wing.

He breathes deeply, in and out, for a few seconds before hanging what Rey had given him off his console.

“Black Squadron, all report,” Poe says into the comms after they go live.

“Black Two, ready,” Snap says.

“Black Three, all systems go,” Jess chirps.

The rest of the squadron calls in, and Poe half-listens, his hand going to grasp the small, strangely beautiful Kyber crystal Rey had just given him. It seems to hum in his hand – what had she said? It “ _seemed like it was supposed to go to you.”_ He doesn’t know what means more about the gesture – that she’d found it and thought of him, or that she’d carried it around with her for weeks.

Poe strokes his thumb over the rough stone and then coughs. “Ground Control, this is Black One announcing take-off: over.”

“Black One, this is Ground Control. You’re cleared for take-off. Safe flying, Commander: over.” Connix answers.

“Alright guys, let’s get this done,” Poe calls to his squadron. His eyes drift to the crystal hanging off his console. “And may the Force be with us.”

***

**

Rey’s broken quite the sweat in the training room when she hears the doors hiss open behind her. She listens through the Force, blindfold still in place, and grins.

“Poe!” She exclaims. Just then, a training droid whirs towards her left shoulder, coming from behind quickly. “Ah, fuck, hold on.” Rey pivots and cleanly slices the droid in half with her practice saber. She deactivates it and rips the fabric off her eyes.

Commander Dameron stands in the doorway, slack-jawed, eyes wide. She doesn’t have to be a Jedi to know he’s impressed.

“How was your mission?” She asks, suddenly painfully aware that she’s dripping with sweat, her hair’s beginning to fall out of its sloppy braid, and she’s wearing a loose tunic. Rey wonders why she wishes she looked … prettier. She’s never thought about looking pretty, or wanted to look pretty in her life.

_Weird._

“It was…good,” Poe offers, sounding strangled. “That was really cool.” He closes his eyes and huffs a laugh, and says self-deprecatingly, “Gods, it was more than cool, sorry, I just...” He trails off and shoves his hands into his pockets, eyes still closed.

“I missed you,” Rey admits, unthinkingly. Poe’s eyes open in shock, and he stares at her. “Sorry, if that’s weird, or anything.”

“No!” Poe shakes his head. “No, I missed you too, I basically just landed, I wanted to come see you, Finn said you were here.”

“Oh,” Rey says. Then she smiles, wide enough to make her face hurt. “That was nice of you.”

“Was it?” Poe asks, quietly enough that she thinks she wasn’t supposed to hear it: so, she doesn’t comment on it. “Don’t let me get in your way, Jedi,” Poe smiles at her again. “If you need to train, I can come back.”

“Train with me!” Rey suggests, feeling excited. “We can practice blaster skills. I’m terrible with a blaster.”

“I doubt you could be bad at anything,” Poe grins. “Gods, Rey, so transparent.  A total Karkarodan.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Rey shrugs. She goes over to the storage unit and yanks out two practice blasters. “Come on, first one to eliminate their targets wins.”

“Don’t say it,” Poe groans, which only makes Rey grin, wickedly.

“Race you!” She tosses the blaster at him, and he catches it, laughing.

Poe Dameron’s fairly good with a blaster, she realizes, ten seconds in. She might actually lose this time. Her droids light up blue, and his light up red, and they spend about five minutes knocking them out of the air and deactivating them.

Of course, they finish at the exact same kriffing time.

“Ugh!” Rey shouts, throwing her blaster to the ground. “Go again?”

“Nah: hand to hand!” Poe suggests. “We can break the tie that way.”

“You’re on, flyboy.” Rey adjusts her hair and wipes her hands on her leggings. “Should I go easy on you?”

“Why, Jedi? Scared to kick my ass again?” Poe laughs easily, and Rey does too.

“I just figured you’d be tired from your big mission,” Rey says, softly. “We don’t have to do this, you don’t always have to do what I want.”

“I like doing what you want to do,” Poe says, and then flinches. “Gods, that sounded stupid.”

“No, it didn’t,” Rey says, feeling like he’s pushed her off the back of the Falcon right before a jump to Hyperspace. “You’re….you’re too nice to me, Poe.”

“No such thing, Sunshine,” he whispers. The air between them is uncomfortably heavy, and Poe has _never_ looked at her like this – she thinks, hysterically, that maybe he’s going to jump on her? But to do what? – and Rey doesn’t know what to do with the heat coiling in her stomach, so she decides to take it out, physically, the only way she knows how.

“Ready for me to kick your ass?” She says, more playfully, Poe straightens up and clears his throat, his eyes looking slightly less…predatory than they had a second ago.

“Always,” he says, walking to the center of the room. Rey joins him, and they look at each other for a few seconds, assessing each other. “Just – not the face, Rey. That’s my credit-maker.”

“Oh, hush,” Rey says. “One…two…”

They shout ‘three’ together, and then leap forward. It’s like dancing, Rey thinks, as they circle each other, striking and parrying. He blocks a particularly vicious blow from her left hand, but Rey takes the opening to kick the outside of his thigh with her right foot.

“Let me know when you yield,” Rey tells him primly, spinning away from a very obviously set-up rabbit punch.

“Not until I’m on the ground, Sunshine,” Poe informs her. Rey rolls her eyes but laughs. She uses the wall at one point to gain more momentum, running at it and executing a backflip so she lands behind him – he’d tried to chase her, which is cute, because she’s way lighter, so she's way faster than he is – and then kicked him lightly in the seat of his pants.

“Come on, Poe, I’m literally kicking your ass, now!”

He tries to tackle her a few minutes later, but Rey just takes advantage of his careless movement, jumping up, throwing her body horizontally – maybe, just maybe relying too much on the Force—and wraps her legs around his hips and thighs. She twists her torso and engages her leg muscles until she’s pulled him down, savagely, towards the ground. Once he’s on his back, she pins his wrists down, sitting on him fully, her knees on either side of his hips.

**

“Beat you,” Rey pants, hips twisting unknowingly, and surely, _surely_ she has no idea what she’s doing to him. It takes everything he has to not buck his hips up into her. Poe doesn’t think he’s misreading the signals from the Jedi girl on top of him; but still, he’s so kriffing convinced he’s going to mess this up, and he’ll die before he messes this up.

Poe doesn’t say anything, too caught up in his own head, so Rey jumps up and offers him a hand. He’s pulled, reluctantly, to his feet, and Rey bounces on her heels, grinning wildly. “You have to say it! I won!”

“Why do you always need to win?” Poe asks, half-exasperated, hand still clasped in hers. He can’t think of a reason to let go. “Why do you always need to be the best?” Her shoulders tense though, and he immediately curses at his miscalculation. Poe opens his mouth to apologize, but she stumbles back, releasing him and looking angry. “Gods, Rey I’m sorry, I just—”

“Get the fuck out of here,” she snarls, voice raised in anger, shaking visibly.

“What?” Poe raises his hands to show her he isn’t trying to hurt her – is that what this is?  He understands she must be fairly traumatized from being a junk scavenger on Jakku, but they'd been getting along - more than, he'd thought - a few seconds ago. “Okay, okay, I’ll leave, but gods, are you okay? Rey?”

“That’s none of your business,” Rey sobs, and that sort of makes sense as an answer to his question, but not really, not when she isn’t actually looking at him. Her eyes are locked on a space somewhere three feet to the left of him, over his shoulder.

“Rey? Sweetheart?” Poe takes a tentative step forward, hand outstretched. “Talk to me, Sunsh—”

He’s thrown violently sideways the second he touches her arm. His back hits the training mat and his breath escapes him with a harsh exhalation. _What the fuck was that?_  

“No!” Rey screams, running and sliding so she’s standing in front of him, her back to him, shoulders heaving from some incredible effort. “No—you don’t get to touch him, Kylo.”

_Kylo?_

“It’s not like that,” she says, pleadingly. “No, it isn’t – you don’t get to – Ben, _please_ , just – ugh! You know I don’t feel that way about –Get the fuck out of here!” Rey shoves, hard, with one hand, a sweeping gesture that meets with nothing, but the lights of the training room flare nonetheless, and Poe feels his own body lifting off the ground from the sheer strength of Rey’s movement.

He’s staring, in shock, at the slender woman in front of him, her muscles still engaged, hand on her lightsaber, shoulders trembling. _Gods, she’s glorious,_ he thinks dazedly. And then, _what in the fucking hells was that?_

Before he can ask, Rey collapses, sobbing, to her knees.

“Rey?” Poe says her name weakly, worried about what he thinks he witnessed. “Rey, Sunshine, what just happened?”

“What do you think happened?” Rey asks a question as an answer. Her hands are covering her face, and her shoulders are still shaking. Poe stands up and walks around Rey, who’s still kneeling, so he can face her.

“I think a power-hungry Sith Lord just threw me fifteen feet across a room despite the fact that he’s lightyears away, and I think that only you can see him.” Poe says it as matter-of-factly as he can, and he hopes the pounding, screaming panic clawing at his throat doesn’t show in his voice.

“You’re about right,” Rey laughs, still crying, so she wipes her eyes weakly. “And I guess that answers your question, huh?”

“What question?” Poe asks, breathless. He kneels down in front of her and holds his hands flat on his thighs, in case she wants to – hold one? Gods, he’s a fucking mess.

“Why I always need to win.” Rey crosses her arms tightly across her middle and squeezes her eyes shut. Her hair’s mostly fallen out of her braid, and it hangs in her face: Poe resists the overpowering urge to tuck it behind her ears. He doesn’t think she wants to be touched right now. “I need to know that I can win things, because I have to be able to beat him,” Rey continues to whisper. “I wasn’t better than him, and he almost killed all of you. I have to beat him, next time.”

“Rey—” Poe starts, and stops.

“He wants me,” Rey continues, and Poe can’t breathe. “Ben. He wants me to join him, or marry him,” Gods, Poe wants to vomit, “Or some equally creepy shit, so he’s been… it’s almost like having a ghost. Leia knows, so – so don’t feel like you have to report me.” _Is that what she’s worried about? That I’d report her?_

To be fair, the commanding officer in Poe definitely sees the merit of not giving the Supreme Leader direct access to the Resistance’s inner-workings. “But I see him, all the time. Snoke created this bond between us, in the Force, and it didn’t go away when he died. I thought maybe it had been weakened, but – he came back. And now I have to see him all the time, whenever he wants, and it’s…it’s driving me mad. I need to be better at things, at everything, so when I meet him again, I can be rid of it.”

“Why does he –” Poe can’t finish the thought, but he forces himself to. “When does he appear to you? Why did he appear now?”

“It’s whenever he wants,” Rey repeats. Her eyes are closed, and her skin is ashen. “When I’m sleeping, when I’m happy, when I’m sad. Remember that day in the storage room? When we counted the rations?” Poe nods – he remembers she had been crying, and they hadn’t talked about it—and then remembers she can’t see him. She must sense it in the Force, though, because she continues, “I was crying because I fell asleep, and I heard him. I didn’t see him again until a month ago, though.”

“What does he do, sweetheart?” If the nickname bothers her, she doesn’t say. “Does he hurt you?”

“He’s been in my head,” Rey admits, and it makes Poe’s stomach clench. Besides a competitive streak a lightyear wide, and a recklessness that’s promising to age Leia Organa into an premature grave, they have one more thing in common. And gods, how he hates that they have this in common. “He’s seen every terrible thing about me: he saw where I grew up, how I didn’t speak to anyone for months on end, how I’d starve for days on end, how I’d sit and beg the Force for someone to keep me company. He uses it against me, tries to drag me down with him.” The image of her suffering curls hot and sick in his gut, and Poe winces.

“Does he – has he learned anything about the Resistance?” He hates himself for asking. He has to ask.

“No,” Rey shakes her head, vehemently. “No, Poe, I swear, he can’t even see my surroundings, and we never talk about anything besides _destiny_ and his ridiculous insistence that he’s my soulmate.”

“Is he?” Poe asks, brow furrowed. _Is that why Rey turned Iolo down for that date?_ He’d thought, maybe, she had her eye on someone else, and a foolish part of him had hoped it was him, briefly, but maybe it was _–_

“Fuck that,” Rey snaps. “No. Fucking no. He sees me as a prize, something he’s owed. I’ve seen the inside of his head, just as he’s seen mine, and just – no. I know what it’s like to be lonely, and abandoned, and abused. It doesn’t have to make you cruel. Assume that I’m very unimpressed with the way he handled his trauma.”

“Oh.” Poe says, for lack of anything better to say. “I’m – sorry?” _I’m sorry I‘m not good at this mystical shit, Sunshine, I just don’t know what else to say, this is a lot for a guy who only pursued an education so he could be a star pilot, I was always a math guy, not really so big into history or religious studies._

“Sorry for what?” Rey asks, eyes opening. Even miserable and flooded with tears, they’re the most beautiful eyes he’s ever seen, and he startles with the realization that he wants to spend the rest of his life looking into them, full stop.

He’s in love with Rey-from-Jakku. He’s probably been in love with her since he stumbled across her crying in the storage room, when she’d teased him and kicked his ass and started healing wounds he assumed were merely permanent scars, and the thought knocks him off his axis enough that he can barely form a response.

“It just. Sounds dangerous, is all.” Poe ekes out. And it’s true: he’s miserable with the idea that the worst monster in the galaxy makes regular appearances to the best person he knows. He’s gutted by the knowledge that her personal safety is regularly risked for some cosmic balance banthashit. Poe wishes he could protect her, but he’s so beyond regretful that there’s almost nothing he could do to stand between her and this horrible fate.

Rey doesn’t hear any of his thoughts. That’s probably why she nods, and wipes her eyes. “It is dangerous, you’re right. You and – and Leia are the only two who know, so um. Please don’t tell anyone else, unless you think it’s…vital for the Resistance’s safety. It _is_ dangerous, and hearing you say that – it makes what I have to do next a lot easier.”

“What do you have to do next?” Poe asks, still winded from his revelation. The woman he loves stands up, and smiles down at him. He’s so distracted by the perfection of her smile, he almost misses how sad it is. Almost.

“I’m going to leave,” she says softly. _Fucking what?_ “Because you’re right, I’m a danger to you all. I’m going to leave and try to figure out how to sever this connection.”

“That’s not what I –” Poe leaps to his feet, and lurches forward to try and catch her. He stops when she raises a hand.

Her smile is even sadder, a tear cutting a brutal path down her soft cheek. “No, Poe, I get it. I talked to Leia about it when you were gone, and she said at the time that as long as Ben didn’t show any signs of being able to physically bridge the connection, we could figure something out. But. But Poe, he just threw you across the room like a rag doll, because you touched me, because he was jealous. What if you’d gotten hurt?” She shakes her head, and every muscle in Poe’s body is frozen in terror, not for himself, but for her. “I need to leave, Poe. Tell Rose and Finn that I’m sorry.”

“Tell them yourself,” Poe says, remembering how to talk. “Gods, Sunshine, don’t leave, stick around, we can figure this out, we can help you.”

“I’m sorry.” Rey’s already walking towards the door, and _fuck,_ this is not how he imagined any of this going, he should have kissed her, back on the mat, he should have kissed her when she started crying: he should have told her the second he knew he loved her.

She’s opening the door, and Poe jogs across the room saying, “Rey, wait, please, don’t go, listen to me for a second, please. I only just got back.” For whatever reason, that’s what gets her to stop. “I’m sorry you’ve been going through this by yourself. I can’t imagine how hard it was for you to tell me that, thank you for trusting me with it, but now I want to help. Let me help you. I can’t do that if you just leave.” _If you leave **me** , _his mind whispers, but he doesn’t let that slip.

“No one can help me,” Rey whispers, shoulders tense. The doors slide back shut, though, and it’s just them in the training room, and he hopes that means he has a few more minutes to convince her.

Poe’s a talker, it’s what he’s been good at for his entire life, even before he starting flying, so he wings it, praying to the Force for guidance.

“He wants you to think that,” Poe says, reaching out to grab her arm but thinking better of it. “Rey, sweetheart, Kylo Ren wants you to feel alone. Don’t. You aren’t alone. I’m here, I’m back, and I’ll help you.”

She turns her large, world-stopping eyes on him, and Poe has to push through this, how much he loves her, how godsdamned selfish it is for him to love her, and to want to keep her close and safe, how he wants to be the one she turns to, because:

“We _all_ care about you, Rey. Me, and Finn, and Rose – all the squadrons, and Leia. Chewie, Beebee—all of us. We’re all here for you, and you never have to be alone again.”

Rey’s face screws up, and he thinks he’s said the wrong thing because she’s crying again, huge, horrible, wracking sobs, but then she throws her arms around him, and Poe hugs her back.

Eventually they sink to the floor, both kneeling on the mat, his body curved around hers. Poe just keeps whispering versions of the same thing to her, not caring as they get progressively selfish, progressively revealing.

“I’m here, sweetheart,” he murmurs into her ear at one point, her fingers tightening on his shoulders. “Rey, you’re never going to be alone again. I swear to you, on the Force. I’m never going to leave you.”

Her breathing slows after a while, the sobs vanishing over time, but he keeps holding her, letting himself be selfish, not worrying about how bad it’s going to hurt when he has to let Rey-from-Jakku go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Fun fact, this originally had Rey fleeing the scene and getting in her X-Wing and flying away for three months to train with Force-Ghost Yoda, but I was like, calm down, a**hole, these people are here for fluff)
> 
> Look at that, I'm learning self-control.


	5. On Foot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe confronts Iolo; Poe does something weird; Rey and Poe visit the Dameron residence, seeking guidance; Poe and Rey race in the rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (nervous laughter b/c this is 15 pages dear god what is wrong with me)
> 
> Also, this is rated T still, but as a solid heads up, both characters definitely reference wanting to partake in mature activities/discuss partaking in mature activities (non-graphic, other than coarse language on Rey's part)

Poe smiles at Rey more and more these days, unable to contain the giddiness of the knowledge that he loves her, he really loves her, in a way that he’d become convinced was the stuff of legends, not destined for pilots with a penchant for trouble that would land a less talented, less favored soldier in a court martial.

Rey smiles back, every time, confusion obvious in her eyes. To be fair, she’s probably confused as to why he hasn’t made a fucking move yet.

Rose Tico, smart as she is, has definitely caught on. One day, at lunch, she takes five minutes to look between Rey, who’s elbow deep in her meal, and Poe, who’s definitely not – definitely _is_ – staring moony-eyed at Rey, while she’s elbow deep in her meal.

“So, Rey,” Rose says nonchalantly. Rey doesn’t pause eating so much as slow down, and looks up at her friend smiling, cheeks slightly swollen from the veg-meat she’d been scarfing down. “I’ll wait.” Rey nods gratefully and chugs some water until her mouth’s clear.

Poe scowls at Rose the whole time, trying to figure out her game.

“Rey, did you give any more thought to Iolo?” Rose asks, ever the picture of a good and thoughtful friend. Poe’s scowl deepens.

“Oh.” Rey’s cheeks flush bright red. “No. Things only just stopped being awkward between us, I don’t want to lead him on.” Rey fidgets with her utensils. “Why, did he say something?”

 _Was that hope? Was she hoping he had said something?_ Poe freezes, hating that he cares so much, but kriff, he’ll find a million creative ways to avoid Arana for the rest of forever if he ends up marrying Rey.

_Marrying Rey? He asks her on one date, and you suddenly think they’re going to get married? Get your karking shit together, Dameron._

“No,” Rose shrugs. Poe tries not to read too much into Rey’s expression, which appears to be relieved. “But, he’s cute. You could do worse.”

“You mean, she could do better,” Poe snaps, immediately regretting it. All three of his friends stare at him in shock. “I mean. Rey’s amazing, we all know that. She shouldn’t settle for someone just because they ask her on a date.” _Even if he isn’t too tip-yip-shit to ask her, so really doesn’t that make him better than me? Wouldn’t I want her to ‘settle’ for me? Could I ask that of her?_

They’re still all staring at him. _Hells._

Finn clears his throat. “Dameron has a point. Arana is trouble, Rose, Rey doesn’t need trouble.”

“I gotta go,” Rey says, grabbing her empty tray, and Rose’s. “See you guys at dinner.” She disappears out the doors of mess so quickly, Poe thinks he may have dreamed up her presence entirely.

“Gods, Tico,” Finn shakes his head. “You’re going to put Dameron into an early grave.” Poe makes an indistinct gurgling sound that was meant to be an affirmative statement. 

_***_

When he sees Iolo later that day during training, he manages to get them matched up for hand-to-hand. It’s just them in the corner of the gym, far away from prying eyes, and after they’ve taped up their hands, they set in on each other, quickly.

Poe’s definitely more aggressive than he usually is, but Arana doesn’t hold back either.

“What’s your deal, today?” Iolo asks, concerned, after he blocks a particularly vicious kick that would have landed near his jaw.

“I think you fucking know what,” Poe snaps, going low and trying to use Iolo's center of gravity against him.

“I really don’t, Poe, enlighten me.” They go for a few more minutes, more informal wrestling than proper combat form, before Poe answers.

“Why the fuck did you ask Rey out?” He grits out between his clenched teeth.

Iolo freezes, his hand in the air. “What?” He doesn’t block the blow to his stomach, and he grunts in pain.

Poe takes advantage of his labored breathing to clarify, jabbing his finger at Iolo when he asks: “Rey. You asked her on a date, and now she gets all flustered whenever anyone talks about you. Why did you ask her? Do you like her?”

“Not like that –” Iolo yelps and ducks Poe’s sudden fist near his face. “Maker, Poe, what the fuck?”

“If you didn’t like her, why did you ask her? Why confuse her? Why make her uncomfortable?” They’re pacing back and forth along the mat, Poe far more on the offense than his friend.

“I was just trying to motivate you into making a move!” Iolo protests, blocking Poe’s next strike, but barely. “Seriously, Dameron, she’s great, and hells, I definitely wouldn’t mind dating her, but everyone knows she’s yours.”

“She isn’t fucking _mine,”_ Poe snaps, hitting Iolo hard enough in the chest that the other man stumbles back. “That’s so karked, Arana. She doesn’t—belong—to—anyone,” he punctuates each word with another strike, Iolo going to block them slower and slower. It’s not exactly his fault that Poe’s so riled up from his choice of words: but Poe knows all too well now that Rey already has a piece of shit out there in the galaxy who thinks she belongs to him. He’ll die before he mirrors Kylo Ren in any respect.

“I get it, I get it,” Iolo says. “I yield, Dameron.”

Poe freezes, his fist raised, half-ready to slug him in the face in a way that the Academy didn’t teach him (but brawling in bars sure did). “Fine,” he spits out. “But don’t fuck with her again. She thought you were being serious, Arana. Don’t mess with her, and certainly not in an attempt to mess with me.”

“Wilco,” Iolo nods. “Sorry, Poe. Seriously, we all thought you two just wanted to bone each other. I didn’t realize you were in love with her.”

“What?” Poe blinks at him. “I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t have to,” Iolo shrugs. “We good?”

“Yeah,” Poe relaxes his fists, realizing how out of breath he is. “Yeah, we’re good.”

**

At lunch the next day, Poe’s reading through a holo-report while Rey’s talking hyper-speed about a mod she made to a T-70 this morning. “It really moves now!” She says, bouncing in her seat. Her hand perches on the table, and her fingers drum against the surface excitedly. “I can’t believe it actually worked, it was totally theoretical, but you were right, Rose, soldering that imported Corellian circuitry on to the reverse internal carburetor let it handle the load perfectly!”

“Basic, please, for us non-mechanics,” Finn requests. To her side, Poe smirks, not looking up from his report.

“Rey did the impossible,” Rose supplies. “She did what no one else could do.”

“What else is new?” Poe laughs. “Our girl can do anything.” Rey blushes, and that’s even before he does something very strange: Poe lifts one hand off his report and covers Rey’s left hand, the hand still on the table, with it. He squeezes her fingers, and Rey's entire body stills. He leaves his hand there, his skin burning against hers, and Rey watches in fascination as his thumb starts to rub gently between the knuckles of her fourth finger.

Rey looks at his face, but Poe’s lost in thought, mid-report, brow furrowed while he concentrates, his left hand still flicking through the different sections. She looks over at Rose and Finn: Rose looks smug, and Finn looks overjoyed. She quirks an eyebrow at them questioningly, and Finn pretends to wipe away a tear. That doesn’t really help her confusion.

“Poe?” She asks, after two quiet minutes have passed, and he’s still absentmindedly playing with her hand. “You okay?”

Poe startles from his report and looks up; he yanks his hand back as if she had used Force-Lightning to electrocute him. “Sorry!” he yelps, jumping up from the table. “Sorry, hells, sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Rey asks, eyebrows lowering.

“Um. I have a – a meeting with Leia. I’ll see you guys later.” Poe rubs the back of his neck, nods at Finn and Rose, and then shoots a quick glance at Rey, his cheeks flushed almost beyond recognition. He gets up from the table and awkwardly waves at them before fleeing the mess hall.

“He left his holo-pad,” Rey says. “I’ll go give it to him.”

“Maybe give him some space, Jedi,” Finn suggests before she has a chance to stand up. Rey nods and doesn't move.

“That was weird though, right?” Rey wrinkles her nose.

“Definitely weird. Also definitely expected.” Finn agrees.

“What? What does that mean?” Neither Finn nor Rose answers her question, and it’s still burning inside her when Leia summons her to go over an option to rid herself of Ben Solo in the bond.

.**

Poe and Connix are the only two present when Leia tells Rey about the Force Tree.

“I think it might be your best bet to eliminate your connection to Ben,” Leia tells her, kindly. “It’s the closest connection to the Force we have, now that Luke has moved on.”

Rey nods, looking somehow both grim and hopeful. “I’ll try anything, General, you know that.” She mutters. Poe’s heart tightens at the bravery in her voice; he hates that she feels like she can never show any weakness. No one present – no one in the Resistance, for that matter – would judge her poorly if she spent the majority of her time running around in circles screaming from the enormous pressure she’s constantly under.

“Okay. You’ll go tomorrow, then, to commune with the Tree, and see if you can find anything in the Force to shed some light on your situation. Shara and my brother both found the Tree to be incredibly helpful, and I hope you do, too.” Rey nods again, and then salutes before exiting Central Command.

Poe turns to leave too, wanting to follow her and tell her why he’d been so kriffing awkward at lunch – _sorry for holding your hand. Sorry for not letting go. Sorry for not wanting to –_ but Leia steps in front of him, blocking his path.

“You should accompany our Jedi,” Leia suggests. “You know this moon better than any of us, and you can say hey to your dad for me.”

Poe narrows his eyes. “I just saw him last Centaxday. Not that I’m complaining, but still. What’s the real deal, General?”

“Rey shouldn’t have to go do this alone, and she trusts you,” Leia allows. The idea that people think of _him_ as a support for Rey, that other people, people he respects like Leia, might think he’s worth her time: it’s heady.

“Okay, I’ll go with her,” he agrees, not needing any more of a reason.

Of course, he isn’t around to hear what Connix says to Leia as soon as the doors to Central Command close behind him.

“Are you in on that bet too, General?”

“Not with the pilots,” Leia allows a small smile to her protegee. “Me and Chewie, though. I gotta bury that Wookiee. He thinks Dameron won’t pull his head out of his ass until the Festival of Light.”

“But can’t you read people’s emotions in the Force?” Connix asks, brow furrowed. “Doesn’t that give you an unfair advantage?”

Leia shrugs and walks away. “A good General never reveals her secrets,” she tosses over her shoulder. Connix grins at her mentor, and then turns to her computer to begin typing up the day’s report.

**

Rey spent a decent amount of her life alone, so she isn’t aces at small talk.

Walking with Poe through the forest of Yavin 4, she forgets that.

Maybe it’s because he doesn’t ever make her feel small, or unimportant. Maybe it’s because he laughs at her strange, context-less jokes. Maybe it’s because he answers all of her eager, curious questions about the local plant life with an easy grin and a thoughtful response, always with more information than she’d asked for included. Maybe it’s because she sees him sneaking rations to the cute, chubby primates that climb out of the trees.

“Who are you?” Rey asked, delighted, the first time one appeared.

“He’s a Woolamander,” Poe explained, smiling at her. Rey held her hand out for inspection to the little monkey, whose clawed hands reached out, its bottom legs firmly perched on the low branch of its tree, and snagged some of her fingers for inspection. Rey laughed under the intense scrutiny, and chattered with the Woolamander, neither one really understanding the other, but enjoying the conversation all the same.

Soon, they’d been surrounded by a tribe of the creatures, and Rey clapped her hands, enraptured by her new friends.

“We gotta keep going,” Poe said, gesturing at the path in front of them. His smile looked a little different when Rey sat in the middle of a Woolamander circle. “They’ll still be here when we get back.” Rey bid a farewell to her friends, and they continued to walk through the forest.

They’re almost at the Dameron compound, and Rey feels inexplicably nervous, even though the two-hour trek through the jungle has been largely enjoyable. Poe smiles at her as the clearing comes into view, and they walk side-by-side up the path leading to the main house’s front door.

That door swings open when they’re still a hundred feet away, and a tiny, silver-haired, tan man pops out. “¡Mijo!” He roars.

“That’s Kes,” Poe mutters before his face splits into a massive grin. “¡Papá!” The men sprint towards each other and hug, tightly. Rey looks across the compound to a cluster of small guest houses, feeling as though she’s somehow intruded on something private, something important, even though she was invited here.

“And who is this?” Kes says, suddenly much closer. Rey turns to look at them both, and sure enough, they’re only a few feet away from her.

Poe looks impossibly awkward, suddenly. “Uh, Dad, this is my --. This is Rey.” Rey notices the odd pause and the lack of a label. Does he not think of them as friends?

She’s thought of Poe as one of her best friends for months, now. Him, Finn, Rose. Her three best friends. She feels strangely sad that it isn’t reciprocated.

“I heard about you!” Kes bounces excitedly. “He won’t shut up about you!”

“Dad,” Poe hisses. “We talked about this.” Kes rolls his eyes and says something so impossibly rapid, ostensibly in Yavinese, that Rey feels more discombobulated than if she had just executed a barrel roll in the Falcon without the grav-stabilizers.

It doesn’t help her concentration, or understanding of the situation, when Poe fires back at his dad, just as rapidly. Rey feels her cheeks heat up at the smooth, gorgeous tenor of Poe’s voice, while she watches his perfect mouth form new and fascinating vowels.

She shakes her head to clear it when Kes starts talking to her in Basic about the Tree. He leads them across the compound, talking a mile a minute, and Rey catalogues some information, namely:

 

Luke Skywalker gave Shara, Kes's wife, a clipping of the original Force Tree-

Shara Bey was the galaxy’s greatest pilot-

Until Poe Dameron, that is-

Shara died when Poe was young– Rey doesn’t catch the cause of death, and while she may be uncivilized, she knows it’s not polite to ask – and Kes misses her, every damn day-

Poe misses her too, and that’s why he’s still got that ring.

 

“Ring?” Rey asks, interest piqued. Poe’s never talked about the jewelry on the end of his necklace, the one he never takes off. She’s walking ahead of the Dameron men, now, traipsing over the terrain lightly, studying the treeline.

“Yeah, the ring, the one that he’s going to give—” Kes is cut off, his breath coming out in a grunt. Rey looks over her shoulder to see the reason why.

Poe’s rubbing his dad’s shoulder, looking concerned. “Gods, Dad, be more careful. He stubbed his toe, Sunshine.”

Rey nods, confused. She doesn’t know why Poe’s lying; he never lies. It doesn’t sit well in his signature, but she chooses not to call him on it.

“I’ll leave you two here!” Kes announces when they hit the tree line. “Poe knows where it is.” Rey thanks him, and Kes smiles at her. Then, he turns to his son and shouts another rapidfire line of Yavinese that has Poe flushing. He punctuates it with a slap to his son’s shoulder, and then he starts walking back to the main house.

“See you two later!”

“Bye, Kes!” Rey calls back. “Your dad is really nice,” she says to Poe.

“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Poe groans. “He’ll never shut up about how he wooed a Jedi.” Rey rolls her eyes but laughs.

They continue to walk for a few more minutes, and then Rey pauses suddenly and gasps.

A beautiful Tree, glowing blue and somehow gold, silver, and green, thrives in the middle of the forest. A sea of roots pours in and out of the ground, knots of bark twisting out of the earth at seemingly random intervals, but Rey can tell : if you look close enough, you can see the exact harmony of the universe.

“It’s incredible,” she says softly. “Your mom planted this?”

“Yeah,” Poe coughs. “Yeah, it’s one of the few things I have left of her. And it belongs to the galaxy, really.”

Rey puts a hand on his arm and tightens her fingers around his bicep, gently. “I think it’s lovely you wear your mother’s ring.” Her ears are burning, but she can’t stop talking. She doesn’t want to. “I’m glad that your family had so much love, Poe. You deserve it. You deserve the galaxy.” Before she can say anything else more embarrassing, she lets him go and turns to walk towards the Tree’s trunk.

She stands underneath the wide canopy of branches, wide-eyed. She’s so entranced by the kinetic, constant movement of light over the tree, that she almost doesn’t notice when Poe returns to her side.

“What did you mean by that, Rey?” He asks, quietly.

She almost doesn’t hear him – something else is talking to her. Rey tilts her head, considering it, and then –

Rey puts her hand on the Tree, and the sound focuses in. “Poe,” she says urgently. “Poe, feel this.” Poe’s hand comes to cover her own, and Rey closes her eyes against the feeling, the feeling of being safe, and protected, and cared for, all of the things she’s come to associate with Poe Dameron, and then --

_Hello, Rey._

“Do you hear that?” Rey asks, aloud.

Poe’s fingers tighten over hers. When she looks at him, his eyes are closed, but he looks oddly peaceful. “I hear something, Sunshine. Probably not the same thing as you.”

Rey nods, and then closes her own eyes. “I’m going to ask it a question,” she says softly. “Don’t feel like you need to wait around if it takes awhile.”

“I already told you, Sunshine.” His hand is still warm on her own. “I’m never going to leave you.”

Rey slides back into the half-way place more easily, this time. “Hello,” She greets the voice, presumably the tree, in her mind.

_What do you need from me?_

“An answer,” she says. “A solution.”

_To your problem with young Ben Solo?_

“Yes.”

_Well, Rey. What is it you fear?_

“I beg your pardon?” Rey asks. “That’s not – no, I just need to figure out how to get him out of my head, that’s all.”

_I understand your mission, but I am asking you about the origin. What is it you fear? What is it about Ben Solo that gives you fear?_

His obsession with her, for starters.

Or his ability to raze an entire village with the flick of a bored wrist.

Or his ability to see right through her.

Or how what he’s accused her of is true: that she may never be truly happy in the Resistance.

Or --

How similar they are.

She goes with a combination of several of the reasons, for now.

“What if Ben’s right?” she asks. “What if the only place for me in the galaxy is by his side?”

Before she can stop it, a rampage of her memories consumes her. She’s four years old, screaming at her parents to come back. Rey is ten years old, digging another tally mark into her AT-AT. She’s twelve, getting her courses for the first time, sobbing because she thinks she’s dying, sobbing because there’s no one there to explain it to her, trapped in her tiny shelter. Rey’s fourteen, breaking her shoulder falling off the side of a star destroyer. Rey’s sixteen, starving to half to death, again, back in the AT-AT, always alone, always by herself, always –

 _Join me,_ Ben Solo’s ghost whispers. _Please._ His hand is warm around hers, in a hut on Ahch-To, in a burning throne room, in the liminal space created by their lonely, exhausted minds.

The Tree’s branches seem to reach out and envelop her mind before It asks: _Would **that** make you happy, young one?”_

“No,” Rey shakes her head, thoughtfully. “No. I don’t want to be kept. I don’t want to be claimed. I just want to be happy, with my friends. Is that so bad to want?”

_Not at all._

A flood of images storms into her mind: Finn laughing as he pulls out contraband alcohol from under his chair – Finn coming _back_ for her, the first person who ever did – Rose smiling over the boiling hot engine of a speeder, Jess leaning over a game of cards and mouthing the contents of Iolo’s hand to Rey; and Poe, good, strong, sweet Poe Dameron winking at her from a cockpit, taking her hand in the mess, ducking his head down bashfully when anyone compliments him, slapping his friends on the back, playing with Beebee during serious meetings, slipping food to the Woolamanders on the way here.

Everything she sees is golden, and Light, and good, and Rey knows.

“I want to believe I belong here,” she says.

 _Then believe it, young one. This is what you always wished for,_ the Tree reminds her gently. _Do not let anyone tell you that you do not belong. Especially not yourself._

The images flash again, all the way back to Takodana, the chair, and the fear, and the loss of control – but when Kylo leans in this time, beautiful brown eyes beseeching and seductive, she doesn’t give in to the fear. She sees it, recognizes it, lets it pass through her.

Loneliness. _You’re so lonely, so afraid to leave, at night, desperate for sleep._ Anger. _I feel it too._ Abandonment. _They sold you for drinking money._

Stronger than the fear, now:

Friendship. _She’s good at everything. You get used to it._ Happiness. _Race you._ Love. _I’m never going to leave you._

Ben Solo reaches out for her in the past, and this time, when she reaches back, she doesn’t let him in. Rey sees where they are connected, and she releases it, releases the bond forged in the crucible of the Dark Side, releases it as if it were water cupped in her hands: she lets it fall through the cracks in her soul, disintegrated into pieces too small to hurt her. Vanishing. Gone.

When she startles back to her body, she sees Poe standing, stock-still, tears on his face.

“What?” she asks, worried. “What did you see?”

“Same as you, I imagine.” Poe clears his throat and wipes his eyes. “Sunshine, how long were you alone in that thing?” He looks tormented.

“Oh,” Rey blinks, realizing what he’s referring to, the AT-AT of her childhood, secretly glad he hadn’t seen the end of the vision. “Is that all you saw?”

Poe nods. “I was stuck there, for what felt like days. You were just a kid, Rey, no one should have to feel like that, especially a kid.”

“I wish you hadn’t seen that,” she whispers.

“I wish you’d tell me about it,’ Poe counters. “But not until you’re ready. I just: I don’t want you to ever feel that lonely ever again.”

Rey nods, and then takes his hand, tentatively. “I don’t think I could be, now that I have you.” Poe blushes, furiously, and tightens his hand around hers. “All of you. I have all of you now.” Rey corrects, desperately. The small smile on Poe’s lips tells her that he understands what she means.

**

He’s still slightly reeling from the vision the Tree gave him, Rey’s aching loneliness becoming his own, however briefly – he’ll never recover from that, he knows, he’ll never stop dedicating himself to making sure she always feels loved, never feels left behind again – when it starts pouring down rain, the way it does without fail every day on Yavin 4.

“Well, fuck,” Poe laughs, staring at the sky. “Must be the afternoon.”

“Yeah!” Rey says enthusiastically. She steps out slightly into the rain and spins in a delighted circle, her hair already beginning to dampen and stick to her neck. She makes a full rotation and then faces him with a mischievous grin on her face. _Oh, hells. I know that look._ “Race you back to the compound!” Rey chirps.

He groans in response. “My dignity cannot take another loss to you, Sunshine,” Poe says, laughing. He sticks a hand out from underneath the broad shade of the Tree they’re sheltering under, and he revels in the feeling of rain striking his palm. Poe grins at the puddle of water in his hand, and then turns to look at Rey.

She’s staring at him, incandescent despite the downpour, and she worries at her lip with her teeth.

“Don’t race me then,” she whispers. “Try and catch me.” Rey’s impossibly close to him, her nose inches away from his own, as her eyes spark with a challenge and some unnamed emotion.

“What?” He asks, suddenly breathless even though they haven’t kriffing moved yet. His eyes flick down to her mouth, and back up to her eyes; he wets his own lips, nervously.

“Catch me, Poe.” Without another word, she’s sprinting through the torrential rain, and Poe doesn’t stop to think about the thousand and one reasons why this is a bad idea – _what’s he going to do if he catches her, for gods’ sakes_ – he just hurls himself after her, running faster than he has in what feels like years, the rain stinging his face. Poe forgets about the terrain, about the puddles that he’s splashing through: the only thing he’s keeping an eye on is the slender, brutally quick Jedi dodging ahead of him.

Poe picks up the pace a little as they near a bend in the path, the main house of the compound just up ahead – he knows this path like the back of his hand, and he has no intentions of slowing down, unlike Rey, who’s taking the turn a little more carefully – and he stupidly, stupidly snags Rey around the waist and pulls her down into the mud.

She lands on top of him with a surprised, soft, ‘ _oh,_ ’ and gods that does something to him; Poe grins up at her, out of breath for more than one reason.

“Caught you!” he proclaims.

“You did.” Rey smiles at him. Her small hand pushes his wet hair out of his eyes, and Poe stares up at her, mystified, wondering if she can feel his heart hammering out of his chest. “What are you going to do with me now, Commander?”

It’s a question he was asking himself the entire sprint here.

What he wants to do isn’t entirely possible in their current position, so he wraps a leg around the back of her knees, puts his arms around her, and flips them so she’s on the ground underneath him.

“I was going to kiss you,” Poe confesses, the rain still too much to bear, but at least now he’s the one getting rained on.

“Oh,” Rey smiles. “I was hoping you would.”

“Yeah?” Poe asks, head tilting to the side as he assesses the woman underneath him. She’s sweaty, absolutely covered in mud, and soaking wet – he’s sure he is, too – and she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Yeah,” Rey laughs, her hands going to his shoulders.

“Yeah,” Poe confirms, ducking down to kiss her searingly, pushing the last months of torment and waiting and pining into it. He kisses her like it means forever, and the ring around his neck tells him that it better mean forever because –

Rey-from-Jakku tastes like caf, he discovers, caf and exhaust, and something inexplicably sweet, and kriff, he’s always been an addictive personality, but this is almost too much, he’ll never be able to stop, not when she kisses him back with such enthusiasm, unbridled excitement and holy _gods,_ she better stop arching up into him like this, or they’re going to make quite the display out here in the rain, on his dad’s front lawn.

They break apart for air, and he’s about to ask her if she wants to take this inside, when she blinks up at him and says, strangely self-conscious, “That was really nice.”

“It was,” Poe agrees cheerfully. Water’s falling out of his hair and onto her face, so he tries to shake some of the rain out of his curls, fruitlessly, before asking: “Should I be worried you sound so surprised?”

“No!” Rey insists. “No, that was just my first time doing that.”

“What?” Poe asks, dumbfounded. “That was your first kiss?”

“Yep!” Rey’s way too excited about this, way too excited to have given something so precious to a scruffy pilot with so little to offer her, who’d gotten way too ahead of himself, stealing her first kiss by pressing her into the fucking ground as if it meant _nothing_ to him, whose filthy mind had immediately skipped to sex.

Rey-from-Jakku’s first kiss should have been under the moonlight, after a night of dancing, and wine, and wooing – Rey-from-Jakku’s first kiss should have been on a front doorstep, flowers in her hand that had been picked just for her – Rey-from-Jakku’s first kiss should have been with someone her age, someone who had less blood on his hands, someone who took her on a kriffing date beforehand, and didn’t tackle her in the fucking mud and then grind into her as if she were something disposable.

“It was my first kiss,” Rey admits, not looking bothered in the least, clearly not having arrived at the same conclusion Poe has. “And it was really nice.”

“It was,” Poe says, dazedly. He kisses her on the nose, sexlessly, and then taps her on the hip. “Let’s get you dry,” he says softly. When they stand, she takes his hand and she jogs with him through the rain to a smaller building on the compound, the one that houses his old room. Poe keys in the access code and points out the ‘fresher. “I need to go talk to my dad,” he excuses himself lamely. “You can use the ‘fresher, and I’ll leave out some clothes for you.” Rey nods, blushing happily still, and Poe stands out on the front step, scuffing his feet against the duracrete, until he hears the water running inside.

He wanders in just long enough to lay out warm, dry clothes – he wills himself not to respond to the idea of her wearing his old pants, back from when he was a much thinner teenager, and one of his shirts, doubtlessly too big on her smaller frame – and then he walks back out, wanting to give her as much time as possible to come to the same realization that he just did.

Poe tilts his head back at the sky and prays to the Force for guidance. He can’t ever take advantage of Rey like that again – she’s so much younger than he is, so much more innocent. He remembers her joking that they didn’t have school on Jakku; minimal research on his part, with Beebee playing assistant, had proven her joke to be buried in truth. Does Rey even know what sex is? Would she have any idea of what he was doing if he initiated it, like he almost had ten minutes ago?

Gods. But she’d been so happy, so receptive to the kiss; Poe wishes he could rewind slightly, take the kiss back, and take her through normal, appropriate steps. He wants to take her on a date, hold her hand, make her dinner, dance with her – he can do all that, he remembers. He can do all that, and if at the end of it, she still wants to kiss him, well.

He’ll make damn sure her second kiss is more special than her first.

**

Rey emerges from the ‘fresher, towel drying her hair. She smiles to herself, humming happily, when she sees that Poe has left out clothes – _his_ clothes – for her. Her breast band is soaked, so she shrugs, disregards it, and pulls on the shirt. Poe can’t be more than two inches taller than she is, if that, but he’s much broader, and she’s almost all legs – _coltish_ , she thinks, _gangly_ – so it covers more than a few inches of her thighs.

The pants just absolutely don’t fit, no matter how much she cinches the waist. Rey snorts, and shrugs again and foregoes the pants. Rey walks to the door, stepping around the piles of holo-novels, star charts, and manuals that are cast about (Poe as a teenager was clearly messy), and she keys open the door.

Poe’s standing outside, his back to the door, face tilted to the sky. The rain’s falling slower now, lighter, and his hands are slightly elevated, palms towards the heavens. His Force signature is still golden, still Light and good and pleasant, and Rey hums again when she feels it throb, joyful in the rainstorm, happy about their shared moment, and – and something else. Something anxious, something regretful.

Does he regret kissing her? She hopes not.

“Poe?” She calls out into the open air. “Are you okay?”

“More than,” he says, not turning around or moving at all. “I have a question for you, though.” Rey waits a moment for him to ask it.

“Yeah?” She asks after thirty seconds where the only sound was rain hitting the ground; she has a reason to be distracted, though. Poe’s not wearing his jacket, and his cream-colored shirt has begun to clung to the muscles of his back in … interesting ways.

“Will you go on a date with me?” Poe asks.

“If you come over here and kiss me, first,” Rey answers breezily. Poe runs his hands through his wet curls while he spins on his heel, laughing at her cheerful answer – his face freezes when he turns around, hands still in his hair. His eyes widen comically when he sees her, standing in nothing but his shirt, hair soaked from the ‘fresher. “Something the matter, Commander?”

“Guh,” Poe says, which makes Rey laugh.

“Is that Yavinese for something?” She asks lightly, sounding bolder than she feels. Poe stumbles forward, hands twitching anxiously.

“Gods,” He groans. “Gods, Rey, that’s just not fair.”

“You’re all wet,” Rey pouts when he trips up the steps and stands in front of her.  

“Not my fault,” Poe supplies readily. “It’s raining.”

“So it is,” Rey nods, sagely. “You’re going to dry off before you kiss me, I hope.” His hands come to rest on her hips, and she finds that doesn’t particularly care that he’s dripping onto the duracrete porch, not when he looks at her like that.

“I was going to wait to kiss you again until after our date,” Poe says, staring at her mouth greedily. “Wanted it to be special.”

“That seems silly,” Rey giggles. “It’s special because it’s you.”

“I don’t deserve that,” Poe murmurs. “I shouldn’t have attacked you like that, Sunshine. Shoulda made it count for something. I want to treat you right.’ He bites his lower lip, and kriff if that isn’t majorly distracting.

Rey still remembers to be cross. “That kiss took two of us, Commander. And personally, I don’t regret it. Do you?”

“No!” Poe almost shouts it, and then he reverts back to his lowered, roughened voice from before. “No, sweetheart, I just regret that I didn’t hold off until after a date, do it proper and all that.”

“I’ve wanted to kiss you for months, Poe,” Rey informs him, rolling her eyes. “I’d rather we not wait anymore. I wouldn’t change anything about that kiss.”

“Yeah?” Poe whispers, leaning in, seemingly involuntarily. Rey can’t blame him, not when she’s pulled forward through the same, unknown force. “Months? Is that right, sweetheart?’

“Yeah,” Rey nods. “Now, I know you said you didn’t want to kiss me until after our date – does it count if I kiss you?” He’s unbearably close to her now, his nose almost brushing against hers.

“Maybe not. One way to find out.” Poe breathes in and out slowly, and gods, she may be a Jedi, but Rey’s only fucking human.

“Hmm.” Rey slides her hands along his jawline, all the way up until her fingers are tangled in his curls. She waits to sense any hesitation on his part, because she really will stop if he wants to wait, but all she feels pouring off of him is happiness, and excitement, and _oh._ Desire. Rey half-remembers that she isn’t even wearing kriffing pants, but then she forgets, because she bridges the final millimeters between them and presses her lips to Poe’s.

It’s softer than it was out on the path. His mouth is warm, and gentle, and they trade open-mouthed kisses for almost a minute without moving.

His hair is soft under her fingers, and every so often he’ll pull back a little bit to adjust the angle, and Rey finds herself copying the movements, tilting her head to see what feels the nicest, to decide the best way to slide her lips against his. Poe’s broad hand comes to rest on the small of her back, and he pulls her in, slightly, and that’s when it all becomes a little less soft, but not in a way that makes her mind.

No, Poe pulls her against his body, and Rey hums contentedly when her chest presses up against his; he groans, though, a low half-growl. “Oh, fuck,” he whispers leaning away so he can look her in the eyes. His hand treks up her back and spasms slightly between her shoulder blades – he must have realized she wasn’t wearing a breast band, Rey dazedly notes. “Maker help me.” The next thing she knows, he’s pushed her against the wall, not forcefully or quickly, just surely and confidently, their legs tangled in a way that makes her feel warmer than before. His hand comes up to cup her jaw, and he angles her chin upwards slightly, his thumb right underneath it, exposing her throat.

Rey gasps when she feels his teeth under her ear, behind her jaw.

“Is that okay?” He asks into her skin. Rey shudders at the vibration it creates.

“Yeah,” she answers immediately. “Yes, that’s good.” He chuckles, another pleasant vibration against her skin, and proceeds to kiss the length of her neck, all the way to her collarbone.

“Poe,” Rey whimpers, tugging on his hair.

“Fuck, I love it when you say my name,” he rumbles against her throat.

“No, Poe, wait—” she says, tugging again at his curls. He stops immediately and pulls back so quickly she almost misses the movement.

“Sorry!” He apologizes, eyes wide. “Gods, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have –”

“Yes, you should have,” Rey scolds him. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea for us to fuck on your front porch where your dad can see us.”

Poe turns redder than the soil on Crait. “We – we don’t have to have sex right this second, Rey.”

“Isn’t that what you were trying to do?” She asks, curiously. “I watched some holo-vids that Rose suggested. What you just did was definitely in more than one of them.”

Poe leans down so his head’s nestled in her shoulder, and he groans even louder than before. “Oh, fucking hells, please don’t tell me that. Do not tell me that if you value my sanity.”

“Fine,” Rey says, rolling her eyes. “So, what do we do now?”

“Snuggle?” Poe asks, hopefully.

His father chooses that exact moment to emerge from the main house. “Hey! Poe! If you’re done making out with your girlfriend, can you come help me lift this chair?”

“Do it yourself, jackass!” Poe shouts, without lifting his head. “So, snuggle?” He asks again, too quietly for his dad to hear.

Rey pinches his side, mercilessly. “Do not ignore your father, Poe Dameron! That man raised you!”

“Oh gods, no he’s taken you in with his cute old man looks,” Poe stands up straight and pouts at her (and fuck if it isn’t effective). “Don’t fall for it, Sunshine.”

“We’ll be right there, Sergeant Dameron!” Rey shouts, grinning at Poe.

“Just call me Kes, honey! And Poe, you should know: I like your girlfriend more than you!”

Rey’s still laughing when she senses the door to the main house close. Poe looks slightly mutinous, so she kicks him in the shin, lightly, to distract him. “So, girlfriend, huh?” She says, shyly.

“Yeah,” Poe laughs, ducking his head. “He’s been calling you that for a few months, now.” It’s not a fluke: she can actually feel the heat of his blush.

“You told your dad about me?” Rey asks, mystified. “Why?”

“Because you’re important,” Poe says readily, without embarrassment. It’s like he reads her mind, because he says: “and I don’t just mean to the Resistance. You’re important to me, Sunshine. Always have been.”

“Oh.” Rey doesn’t really have much else to say, so she grabs Poe by the collar and tugs him down for another kiss. This one tastes like happiness, and hope, and something a little larger than both emotions that she thinks she might have a name for. She thinks she knows what it means now, now that she’s come to truly know a good-looking pilot with a reckless streak and a wicked smile and a heart so pure it may as well be made of pure light.

Rey kisses Poe Dameron under the awning of his childhood home, and she smiles into it, understanding at last that she loves him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of the Rated T section! I wanted to wrap it up as nicely as possible here at the end of Chapter 5 (i.e. end of UST) in case you guys don't want to read smut
> 
> Because Chapter 6
> 
> It's literally just 5k words of smut. 
> 
> Hopefully I'll post that tonight or tomorrow!
> 
> Thank you for reading, as always <3
> 
>  
> 
> Edit:it’s now got some serious action/angst scenes as lead up to the smut, tell me now to control myself and I’ll take it back out


	6. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe and Rey go on several dates;  
> The Resistance takes out a First Order base, risking heavy losses to their rebuilt Navy;  
> Poe and Rey grow closer than before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did ya want a 10k word chapter? Because that's what you got. No regrets.
> 
> It's happening, y'all. We're gonna earn that E.
> 
> Warning:  
> one character assumes the other is dead after a dogfight, heavy angst/feels, however brief in the grander context of this smut-fest
> 
> Warning 2:  
> Smut begins after the Rey POV switch; basically stop after she says "Race you" if you don't want that smutty smut smut.  
> Warnings in de smut:
> 
> *Both characters are on preventative birth control/Kalonia's got them all shot up to hell with anti-STI vaccines (b/c there's a war on, you hot-blooded pilots), so they do engage in sex without condoms/discussing birth control  
> *Heavy foreplay, Poe is a dirty talker, use of the 'c' word (non derogatory, more explanatory), oral sex (male to female), vaginal sex/loss of virginity (Rey, not Poe)  
> *Unabashed sentiment

Poe asks Rey on a real, official date two days after they come back from the Dameron compound.

She has an unbridled moment of panic when she realizes she has no idea what to wear. Then, she remembers that it’s _Poe,_ he sees her all the time, she’s pretty sure she loves him, and he knows what she looks like.

So, she asks Rose to braid her hair nicely, and she washes her face and brushes her teeth vigorously, and wears her nicest, least-worn-in-battle blue tunic, with her cleanest leggings-- cream colored for once.

“Well, this is as good as it gets,” she shrugs, wrinkling her nose in the mirror of the ‘fresher.

“Honey, you’re good is anyone else’s best,” Rose laughs. “You’re gorgeous, and Poe’s going to pass out when he sees you because I’m pretty sure he’s always a little close to passing out when he sees you.” They both break into giggles at that.

A knock at the door a second startles them both into action. Rey smooths her tunic out anxiously and gives Rose a thumbs up, and Rose opens the door with great dramatic flair, revealing—

BB-8.

“Hey, Beebee!” Rose says, poking her head around the corner. She comes back to stare at the droid. “Where’s Poe?”

[Master Poe requests that I lead Rey, status: Champion-of-All to the locale of their date]

“Sounds good,” Rose shrugs. “Good luck, Rey.”

“Thanks Rose!” Rey skips past her friend and bends down to hug her, blushing when she kisses her on the cheek.

“I feel like a proud mama Porg!” Rose laughs. “Now, go get him, girl!” Rey waves at Rose, and flinches slightly at the parting shot of: “And don’t forget to pee right after you two do it!”

Beebee rolls down the corridor, and Rey smiles and begs off a passing Iolo and Jess when they request she play sabacc with them.

“Not tonight guys, sorry,” Rey shakes her head.

“You got a big date?” Jess asks, grinning.

“Yeah, me and Beebee,” Rey laughs, and the other pilots do too, waving at her and walking away. Something awkward settles in her stomach. Did Poe send Beebee so no one would know they were on the date?

She works on forgetting her anxiety while Beebee leads her up the exit ramp, and out the hidden door to the jungle of Yavin 4. The fresh air hits her lungs, and Rey breathes deeply. She’ll never get used to how green this planet is, how dense the trees, how beautiful everything is.

Maybe that last opinion’s entirely built on the handsome pilot standing under a nearby tree, leaning against the bark, a shaft of golden sunlight streaming through and lighting up his features.

“Hey, Sunshine,” he calls out lazily, grinning at her fully. Behind her, Beebee coos in farewell and rolls back inside, mission accomplished.

“Hey, Commander,” she answers, smiling shyly.

He pushes off the tree and walks over, offering her his arm. “Ready?” Rey nods, eagerly, her nervousness completely gone as soon as she tucks her hand into his elbow. “Hope you’re hungry.”

“Always,” Rey laughs. They walk through the trees for about five minutes, the silence calm and not awkward.

Soon, they walk off the beaten path and navigate through the thicket, Poe offering her his hand so she can step over fallen trees, which makes Rey roll her eyes (but she accepts the help all the same, because no one has ever offered her help while knowing and appreciating that she could still do it herself, because it makes her feel safe, cared for, and not disrespected).

They come up to a beautiful, hidden body of water, with a patch of grass that extends out over the lake’s surface. There’s a large blanket spread out, and a basket full of food that certainly doesn’t look like rations.

Rey stares at it, smiling uncertainly.

“You like it, Sunshine?” Poe asks, rubbing his neck.

“It’s lovely!” Rey assures him. “But what is it?”

“A picnic,” Poe laughs. “It’s called a picnic.”

“I like that,” she says brightly. Poe holds her hand as they settle down onto the blanket, and they spend the next hour merrily throwing food at each other and trading stories about their weirdest experiences –meals, for instance.

“Definitely tentacle soup,” Poe says, laughing. “On Naboo. They were _still alive,_ Rey.”

“Gross,” Rey groans. “But I got you beat, flyboy. Weirdest meal, definitely some mushrooms I found growing on the back of a fallen dreadnought. Why mushrooms were growing in the desert, I’ll never know, but I was starving, and I only really hallucinated for 12 hours, so.” She sips from the canteen of Muja-juice and snorts at the look of horrified discomfort on Poe’s face.

Eventually, Yavin begins to set over the trees, and the Woolamanders begin to hoot, signaling the beginning of twilight. Rey sighs happily and turns until she’s lying down, with her head in Poe’s lap. He threads his fingers through her hair, and scratches lightly at her scalp. Rey wants to purr like a Loth-cat, and she smiles up at him as he leans over to look at her.

Poe looks so, so happy, and it makes her want to cry, the fact that she makes someone like Poe Dameron look that happy.

“Good date, Sunshine?” Poe asks her softly. Rey nods, sleepily, and then goes back to watching the light fade over the trees.

“Best date,” she says.

“So far,” he taps her on the nose. “Wanna head back soon? Probably should beat curfew if we don’t want to stir up rumors.” Rey nods, already sad at the prospect of ending their evening, and walks back through the trees with her hand clasped tightly in his.

He lets her hand go the second they’re near the doors.

“Poe?” Rey asks, tremulous. “Are you…are you embarrassed of me?”

“What?” Poe spins to stand in front of her, and he looks so upsets by the question that she feels slightly better. “No, Sunshine, gods no, of course not.”

“Just,” Rey shrugs. “You don’t seem like you want anyone to know about us.”

Poe groans and buries his face in his hands. “No, sweetheart. It’s because those kriffing pilots have a bet on when we’re going to get together, and I don’t want to add fuel to their fire.”

Rey considers this, and then nods. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s fuck with them.”

“What?” Poe grins.

“Yeah, let’s just…not tell them, until they’re all wrong with their bets, and then we can just be like, ‘oops, this has been happening forever.’ It’ll be great.”

Poe shakes his head. “You’re evil, Jedi.”

“The Dark Side is very powerful,” Rey acknowledges. “I have my weaknesses. Fucking with pilots is one of them.” He snorts and strokes his thumb over her cheekbone, once.

“Let me walk you back to your room, at least,” Poe says. “That won’t look all that suspicious, I was mooning after you for months, they’ll just assume that’s still the status quo.”

It’s sad to walk through the hallway next to Poe and not be able to touch him, but she’s still floating from the pleasantness of their date, so she doesn’t examine it too closely.

At her door, Poe looks around and then places his hands on her arms. “I had a really, really great time, Sunshine.” He smiles at her, and Rey feels her cheeks flush. They’re so close to each other, and Rey is utterly distracted by the flecks of gold in his brown eyes.

“I did too,” Rey whispers. It’s like being in a Force-trance, being this close to Poe. She doesn’t ever want it to stop.

“Mm,” Poe hums, and leans in closer, his eyes drawn to her mouth in a way that makes Rey wish she’d taken that gloss Rose had offered. “Can I kiss you, Rey?”

“Yes,” Rey says. “I’d like that.”

His hands come to cradle her jaw, and he closes the distance between them with an agonizing slowness. His lips slot over hers perfectly, pressing in for several seconds before he tilts his head slightly and opens his mouth to kiss her more deeply. Rey responds, letting her tongue run along his bottom lip, the way he’d done to hers two days ago, and she wraps her fingers around his forearms.

The kiss could go on for thirty seconds, or thirty years, and Rey’s feeling more dazed than she had when she’d woken up on _The Supremacy_ with half a saber and a broken heart when they finally break apart.

Poe doesn’t pull away entirely, instead, he looks into her eyes, and murmurs, “That should have been your first kiss, Sunshine. It should have been like that.”

“I don’t have any complaints,” Rey reminds him. She kisses him swiftly before he can pull away, and Poe moans low in his throat, a sound that makes her stomach clench. “Do you want to come in?” Rey asks, hopeful. Gods, but he’s cute, in his issued leather jacket and low-slung pants. His hair is messy, but purposefully so, and she thinks if he gives her a chance, she can get it even messier.

“Not tonight.” Poe kisses her on the cheek and then straightens up, releasing her all the way. “Goodnight, Sunshine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Rey watches him walk away, and she giggles when he turns to look at her, right before he turns the corner.

**

They go on a few more dates over the next weeks, and Poe grows steadily more smitten with the beautiful, brilliant Jedi girl.

He never stood a chance, he fully appreciates that now.

“I love you,” he mutters one day, after his doors have slid shut. There’s hundreds of feet of corridor between them, tons of durasteel, but he mutters it all the same, banging his head on his closed door. “I love you, Rey.” _Kriff._

They’re called to a mission several weeks after Rey managed to sever her connection with Kylo – she’s walking more loosely now, her shoulders free of a tension he hadn’t even really noticed was there until it was gone – and it’s all hands on deck.

Another weapon-planet has been built, _The Finisher,_ and Poe only snorts once when he hears the name.

“Was _The Overcompensation_ taken?” Rey mutters to him at the Gen-Ad briefing. Poe snorts louder at that, almost spits the sip of caf he had just taken.

Leia gives them both a look over the holo-map of the planet, and Poe clears his throat and tries to re-focus.

Dagger and Gold are tasked with flying into the fake-mountain that houses the weapon – not quite as powerful as _Starkiller_ , but also not dependent on suns for energy – and laying explosives.

Black and Red Squadron will hold off hostile fire from the skies.

Knight One will fly defense, until Kylo Ren shows up. Then, she’ll engage with him, and hopefully take him out.

Poe doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t want to tell his girlfriend _and_ the general that he disagrees with their plan.

He tugs Rey into a storage closet when the at-stations sirens begin to wail, and he kisses her with eons worth of passion, pushing her up against the wall. Her long leg wraps around his hip, pulling him in closer, until he’s cradled in the space between her legs, nestled in her hips.

“Fuck,” Poe groans into her throat. “Fuck, we gotta go—”

“One more minute,” Rey begs, and kriff he can’t tell her no, he’ll never deny her anything, not when he wants this so badly, too, so he kisses her for another minute, and then another.

“Okay,” Poe nods. “Okay. Good luck out there, Jedi.”

“You too, flyboy.” Rey kisses him on the nose, sweetly, and Poe closes his eyes, willing the butterflies in his stomach to go down. Rey cocks her head and listens to something, and then smiles. “Coast is clear, you go first, Commander Dameron.”

Poe goes to the door and pops his head out; sure enough, there’s no one out here. He turns around and grins at Rey before ducking into the hallway. He wishes he had a cam, wishes he could remember, forever, how she looks leaning against the wall, mouth swollen and kiss-bitten red, strands of her hair falling out of her braid. Rey’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and he never wants to stop looking at her. He doesn’t want to leave the closet behind him, but he does; he has a job to do, people to lead, so he jogs to the hangar, checks with his squadron, and then gets his bird in the air.

Of course, if he knew how the mission was going to go, he may have never let either of them leave that closet.

***

The mission is a roaring success, at first. Dagger and Gold swoop into the mountain with little to no resistance, and Black and Red are in fine form. The TIEs scatter, clearly not expecting an assault, and once Rey joins in the fight, swooping around the outskirts of battle on _The Finisher,_ it’s even more of an imbalance of skill and power.

“Good flying guys, keep sharp,” Poe tells his squadron. They all answer with varying degrees of exhaustion and elation. He grins, feeling cocky once again, feeling good, feeling –

 “Fuck!” Rey shouts into the comms. “Oh, get karked, Solo.”

“Rey?” Poe calls to her. “You okay, Sunshine?”

“That’s Commander Sunshine to you, Dameron,” Arana laughs. Poe grits his teeth and doesn’t scream any of the obscenities he thinks would be fitting for Iolo in this moment.

There’s still no response from her thirty seconds later, and Poe loops around the battlefield anxiously. “Commander Rey please respond.”

“Here—” Her comms are crackling oddly. “He won’t stop – ugh, you bantha-breathed –”

“Rey?” Poe shoots down a couple hostiles while punching his ship backwards, and then he pulls up, aggressively, so he can lift above the majority of the melee.

Then he sees her:

Maybe three klicks in the distance, locked in an intense dogfight with a TIE-Silencer. Kylo Ren’s ship.

“Oh, you fuck-Hutt!” Ten more TIE-fighters swarm her X-Wing, and Rey curses with increasing rigor. Poe signals to Black Four and Black Five to go provide backup without thinking, and they confirm the order.

“No! Don’t do that, Poe, I can handle myself.” Knight One spirals between the formation of TIEs, and zooms off into the distance. “I’m going to lead him away,” Rey shouts.

“Don’t kriffing –” Poe swears and slaps his console. “Gods damn it, Rey, get back here, that’s not how this works.”

“I think it is, Commander.” Rey sounds sad, which makes his heart clench in terror. Above them, in the mountain base, Dagger Squadron and Gold Squadron are clearly successful in laying the explosives, because there’s a terrifying shudder that cuts through the ground of the fake planet.

“This is Central Command,” Connix announces through the comms. “General Organa has given the order to evac, effective immediately. All squadrons depart.”

“Did you hear that, Sunshine?” Poe asks, already flipping the switches to get him the fuck out of atmo before this thing blows. “We gotta go.”

“You do,” Rey says, obviously still flying, not listening to him, gods, why doesn’t she just listen to him this _one_ time. Her stubborn streak is attractive on the best of days, but this is not the fucking best of days. “I need to finish this.”

 _I have to beat him, next time,_ whispers the ghost of Rey’s voice from the training room.

“You don’t need to finish it today, sweetheart,” Poe points out. “Black Squadron, leave, now.”

“Not without Rey,” Jess protests. “And not without you, Commander.” The ground gives another almighty shudder, and the TIE fighters start to swarm in even greater numbers.

“That was a fucking order,” Poe shouts. “Go, now.” His squadron accelerates rapidly towards the edge of the faux-atmo, and then one by one, make the jump into Hyperspace. It’s been maybe thirty more seconds, seconds they don’t really have, and Rey continues to become an increasingly small dot on the horizon. Poe swears under his breath.

“Rey, come on, let’s go home, please,” Poe begs. “Please, Rey.” There’s no response, and the fire exchanged between her and Kylo is practically the only thing he can see at this point. “Race you home?”

“I’m sorry, Poe,” Rey whispers. “I’m so sorry.” There’s a sharp sound of static – she’s turned off her fucking comms. Poe snarls in frustration – _gods_ , _I hope I was never this fucking stubborn._ He has half a mind to write an apology letter to all of his past XOs – and then the bottom of Poe’s stomach drops out, probably forever.

There’s an explosion on the horizon: a terrible, massive ball of fire pluming up from where he’d just seen Rey.

A ship went down.

“No!” Poe screams, reaching up to disengage his engines from lightspeed prep.

A new but familiar voice comes over his comms. “BB-8, this is General Organa. Our computers indicate that you are primed to immediately launch directly into Hyperspace. Punch it, now.”

“Don’t you _fucking_ dare, Beebee—” There’s a shrill scream from his droid, and Poe shouts too as they’re thrown into Hyperspace. “No! No, fucking damnit, go back!”

It’s an agonizing ten minute flight back, and Poe’s completely locked out of the controls. He can’t think, he can’t speak, he can’t feel. He can’t.

BB-8 takes over completely and navigates the X-Wing towards the base. Eventually Poe recovers enough muscle memory to park Black One in the hangar.

Poe sits, shaking in his X-Wing. “No,” he mutters. “No, no, no.” He punches his console and feels the skin of his knuckles split. His fingers tangle in his hair, and he sets his head down on his knees.

[Master-Poe?] Beebee trills nervously. [Master-Poe, you need to exit Black One so it can begin the eradiation process.] When Poe doesn’t respond, too busy fighting back a shadow of anger and grief he doesn’t think he can come back from, Beebee tries again. [Master-Poe, you must exit the X-Wing, or you may start to suffer from symptoms of radiation poisoning.]

“Does it look like I give a fuck?” Poe snaps, still yanking on his hair. “Oh, fuck.” She’s dead. Rey’s dead.

It’s like Muran, all over again, and Tallie, and L’ulo. All the people he couldn’t fucking save.

But it’s also not like them, because it’s _Rey._ It’s Rey-from-Jakku, who had told him, secretly, before she knew him or had reason to trust him, that she didn’t want to be a soldier.

Rey wanted to see all the green in the galaxy, she wanted to have a family – and he’d hoped, oh _kark,_ he’d hoped she’d want one with him – she wanted to help people. He’s lost friends before, and gods if it didn’t fuck him up, but they were all soldiers who _chose_ this. Rey got tossed into it by the Force, and fate, and her own kriffing bad luck, and she’d just had to get mixed up with a shitty hotshot pilot who couldn’t…who didn’t…

Rey was supposed to live, outlive all of them, save the Jedi Order and the galaxy; and if she had the time or the interest, she was supposed to be with him.

And she’s – she’s just fucking gone, just like that. They’d only been on four dates, for fuck’s sake, he’d – he’d only just kissed her six hours ago, before they walked to the hangar, she was just here, she was –

“Get out of that damn cockpit, Commander Dameron,” General Organa shouts from the ground. Poe falls into basic-rote-soldier mode and disengages Beebee and the canopy-locking mechanism. He stands as soon as he can and walks down the ladder heavily. His face is wet, and his breath is ragged. Poe can’t give a fuck, though.

All the lights in the galaxy seem to have gone out. Damn hope, and damn believing in it in the dark.

Leia looks at him for a second; Poe stares back, blankly. Then, the small woman holds her arms out, and Poe steps into her embrace. She holds him closely, her hands coming to stroke his back comfortingly, and Poe chokes on how hard he’s suddenly sobbing.

“Leia,” He cries. “She—she –”

“I know, Poe, I know.” She shushes him softly and continues to rub his back. “That was intense, it was a lot for everyone.” Poe steps back, wiping his eyes furiously. Black Squadron is standing on the hangar floor, staring at him in shock. Why do they look so surprised? Does he really come off as that much of an ass, that he wouldn’t weep for her?

They don’t know that he and Rey are together, and they probably have only guessed – Iolo excluded – that he’s in love with her. Maybe that’s why they look so confused at his display of emotion.

“I gotta go back,” he sniffs, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his flightsuit. “I gotta—”

“You aren’t going back, Poe” Leia tells him, looking wary. “You can’t. The planet’s gone.”

Poe take a shuddering breath, more hot tears leaking from his eyes. “Fuck – I need to get the – she should have had a proper burial.” He whimpers, snot and tears running together rapidly. “She should have been buried here.”

“Who, Poe?” Leia stares at him in confusion.

“Rey –” he cries harder, saying her name. “Oh, gods, Leia –”

“Commander Rey made the jump into Hyperspace a minute and a half after you did,” Leia says slowly. “Poe, she was circling the wreckage of Ben’s ship for any signs of the Supreme Leader when Black One left.”

“What?” Poe asks, not understanding. “She—”

A massive _crack_ resounds above them in atmo, and a dozen or so pilots clap each other on the shoulder and start shouting. They’re all running, running to the dock Rey usually parks in, and Poe’s still trying to catch up. The crowd continues to grow, swelling by the second, and his feet drag forward of their own volition.

Knight One soars into the hangar, engines smoking, sparks flying from some dented metal, but it parks neatly all the same. The R2 unit on back lowers and stalks away cheerfully, extoling the many virtues of its pilot to the other gathered droids. Poe shoves, probably harder than necessary, through the gathered throngs of people.

“Your girl did it!” Snap roars, slapping him on the back, but Poe doesn’t even blink, not when he’s staring at the cockpit of the X-Wing.

Rey throws the canopy open and leaps up, coughing slightly from the acrid smoke that had been trapped in her cockpit with her. She takes her helmet off and shakes her hair free before turning and waving at the crowd. She’s grinning, the expression more than tinged by stress and sadness and exhaustion, but it falls off her face in two seconds flat when she sees Poe.

“You’re alive,” he whispers, still not quite believing it. The last fifteen minutes were the worst of his life, and he never wants to repeat them. There she is, gorgeous, and whole, and perfect, and _alive._ “Rey,” he says, louder, almost a shout. “Rey, get down here, now.”

She descends the ladder and approaches him timidly. “Sorry, Poe, I’m sorry, I thought you saw that it was Kylo that went down, I didn’t mean to shut the comms off permanently, they got fried a few seconds after I switched them, I’m sorry—”

Rey talks to him the entire time, ignoring or not noticing the stares of the crowd, she keeps talking after Poe’s surged forward and caught her up in his arms, his hands sliding up her waist, her shoulders, her neck. His thumbs stroke the length of her jaw, her cheeks – all the while, his eyes are raking over her body, searching for any sign of injury, but blessedly, impossibly, she’s fine, she’s okay, she’s really –

“And really, Poe, I didn’t meant to ignore your orders, I just needed to finish it--”

His hands are still cupping her cheeks, softly, and Poe leans forward. “Stop talking,” he whispers. “Please.”

Rey nods, and Poe presses his lips to hers, one hand drifting back down her neck, sliding down her arm until he reaches her small waist; he drags her towards him, tugging her as close as she can get. Poe kisses her for all he’s worth in the middle of the hangar bay, tongue desperately swiping at her bottom lip, begging for entrance, the kiss becoming increasingly sloppy and desperate as he tries to demonstrate to her how fucking overjoyed he is that she’s okay, how wildly, incredibly amazing it is that she’s alive –

“Fuck!’ Someone behind them shouts. It’s Snap. “Oh, fucking hells, you two couldn’t have gone another three days?”  

“Pay up! I said the commander wouldn’t be able to control himself after a FUBAR mission!” Kare yells.

Poe pulls away from his girlfriend, panting slightly, and rests his forehead on hers. “Wanna get out of here?” He asks her, stomach still roiling from the emotional whiplash.

Rey nods, her fingers still tangled in his hair, eyes closed. “Yeah,” she whispers.

“All of you, fuck off,” Poe announces, turning to the doors and lacing his fingers with Rey’s. “And General, we’re not going to debrief. Sorry. Put it on my record, not hers.” He tugs her forward behind him, and they walk through the crowd.

“No, no,” Leia grins. “I feel like this is one insubordination that I fully support.” Poe rolls his eyes at his mentor and keeps walking.

When they’re in the hallway, finally, blessedly alone (no doubt having left a hundred, stunned pilots in their wake), Rey tugs on his hand and stops walking.

“Poe, I’m—” She’s shaking, and he hates that, hates that she almost died, knowing that the adrenaline surge is probably wreaking havoc on her muscles, so he half-kneels, grabs her behind the knees and at her lower back, and scoops her up quickly into his arms.

“Yours or mine?” He asks, not breaking eye contact.

“Yours,” Rey nods, eagerly. “Yours, Poe, please.” They both know exactly what they want to do, what they need to do. Poe needs every possible reminder that Rey’s alive, the woman he loves is alive, and he strides down the hallway as quickly as he can with a reckless, perfect, stubborn Jedi in his arms.

**

Rey stands across from Poe in his quarters, and she doesn’t feel nearly as nervous as she though she would.

“Are we going to have sex?” She asks bluntly, forgetting to be embarrassed.

Poe turns redder than his flightsuit, which he’d stripped off the second they walked in. Rey had taken hers off too, and now they’re standing in their regular clothes: Poe in his loose shirt and trousers, Rey in her tunic and leggings. “I’d like to,” he admits. “But only if you do.”

Rey grins at him, and immediately goes to undo her belt. “Okay! Race you?” She asks, hopefully, yanking the leather away from her body and throwing it in the corner of his room, suddenly very grateful that Beebee hadn’t followed them back.

He strides across the room quickly, and pins her wrists down at her side. He looks into her eyes, and it almost burns, how intense his gaze is. “No, sweetheart,” he whispers. “This isn’t a race.” She opens her mouth to fight him, but he kisses her, open-mouthed but so, so gently under her ear, and she loses her train of thought. “It’s not a race. I’m gonna take my time with you,” he whispers into her skin, sliding his mouth along her jaw until he captures her lips.

They kiss for a few minutes after that, Poe slowly stroking his hands up and down her back, and Rey finds herself relaxing more and more in his arms.

“I don’t know a whole lot about this,” she whispers into the space between them after they part for air. “What comes first?”

The look he gives her is beyond mischief: it’s dark, and intoxicating, and ravenous. Rey thinks every molecule of her body must be on fire from it.

“Do you really want to know, sweetheart?” He asks her, his voice lower than ever. Rey nods, eyes wide, not trusting her voice to cooperate. “I’m going to tease you,” Poe swears, kissing down her neck. When he reaches the edge of her tunic’s neckline, he pulls up to look her in the eyes, and he bites his lip before finishing his idea. “I’m going to open you up so slowly, bit by bit, until you can’t take it anymore, and then I’m going to keep going. I’m going to use my tongue to get you dripping for me, and when you’re wet and ready for me, I’m gonna fuck you, I’m gonna fuck you so slowly, so good, you’re gonna forget your own name, Sunshine. Does that sound okay to you?”

Rey whimpers, biting her lip and staring at him in wonder. She’s trembling like she’s a leaf caught in a rainstorm.

“I need you to answer me,” Poe says, his voice rougher than sand. He kneels down, and puts his hands on her hips, lifting her tunic to expose the top of her leggings. “If you don’t, I’m going to think you don’t want this. Do you want this? Do you want me?”

“I want you,” Rey whispers, hand going to his hair instinctively. “I really want you.” Poe groans and uses his teeth – kriffing hells, that’s something people do? – to undo the fastenings of her leggings and pulls them down halfway, stopping at her mid-thigh, exposing inches of skin that he kisses so gently, she thinks she might break.

“You smell like starlight,” he whispers, nosing along her underwear, and Rey squeaks in mortification: she hasn’t showered since last night, and gods, Rose had mentioned something about mouths on genitals, but she’d thought the concept silly and hadn’t put much stake in it. This, though. Rey’s going to burn alive from this.

“What did you want to do first?” she asks, quietly, willing herself not to do something embarrassing like squeak again, or whimper, or cry from how good his soft kisses feel, the gentle pressure of his lips immediately chased by the scratch of his stubble.

“Something I think you’ll like,” Poe laughs into her thigh. “But you’re right – where are my manners?” He stands quickly, and Rey’s back is on the mattress faster than she can say _Jakku_. Poe stares at her, stretched out on his bed, and she grabs the sheets, searching for an anchor, when she sees his hand go to adjust the very obvious tenting in his pants.

“I meant what I said,” Poe tells her, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. He’s kneeling between her legs, staring at her as if he sees right through her, as if he likes what he sees when he looks at her. “I wanna use my mouth, first, my mouth and my fingers. Is that okay with you?”

Rey nods, helplessly. “Yes,” she whispers, not recognizing her voice or the emotion that’s rising in her throat, or the pressure building between her legs. “Gods, yes, Poe, whatever you want, just –”

“Just what, sweetheart?”

“Promise me you’ll explain what you’re doing,” Rey whispers. “I want to know what’s happening.”

“I’ll check with you every time I do something new,” he swears. His fingers start to trip down her thighs.

“And Poe?” He freezes his hands automatically and smiles at her. “Promise me something else.”

“Anything, Rey. I’ll give you anything you ask for.” That statement makes her flush harder, and she tries to rub her thighs together, but he’s still kneeling between them, her calves hanging off the bed while he’s on the floor. Something about her aborted wiggle makes him grin, and it’s a darker version of his normal smile, and it makes the heat flare higher in her stomach.

“Promise me you’ll let me return the favor,” Rey says. “And promise me you’ll show me how.”

“Gods, how are you even real?” Poe moans before leaning over and kissing her on the stomach. “I promise. Now, I’m going to kiss you, and then I’m going to keep kissing you, all the way down to your sweet little _coño_ , and you can stop me at any point. I’ll go slow.”

“Okay,” Rey whispers, staring at the ceiling as Poe makes good on his promise. “Poe?” She asks after a few agonizing seconds. He presses a firm kiss into her skin, an inch below her belly button, making her squirm more.

“Yeah?”

“What’s a _coño_?”

He laughs, sweetly, fingers stroking over her hipbones. “It’s Yavinese,” he explains, looking sheepish. “Sorry, it’s…it’s kind of a dirty word, for the kind of sexual parts you have.”

“What’s the word for it in Galactic Basic?” Rey asks, curiously. She’s always liked learning new languages; maybe she can get Poe to teach her Yavinese.

Poe turns bright red, and that distracts her. “What?” Rey laughs. “How bad can it be?”

“I can’t say it …” Poe whispers. “Gods, you’ll probably hit me.”

“You already said it, just in a language I don’t know.” Rey rolls her eyes and props her weight up on her elbows. “Come on, Dameron, out with it.”

Poe kisses her, slightly lower than he did last time, and she yelps from the hot pressure. “Cunt,” he whispers into her sensitive skin.

“What?” Rey asks, knowing she’s about to laugh at the look of intense mortification on his face. “I’m sorry, Commander, what was that?”

“Cunt,” he says louder. “It’s…Yavinese for ‘cunt.’ Gods, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Rey says cheerfully. “I use that word all the time, and in mixed company, too. I didn’t really realize it meant sexual parts, I thought it was just a curse word.” Poe shakes his head and smiles at her, still bashful. “I certainly didn’t know it could sound so nice. Say it again?”

“Cunt,” Poe obliges, still blushing furiously, which is – cute. Poe Dameron is cute.

“I like it in Yavinese, better,” Rey admits. “Again?”

“Coño,” he whispers, leaning back down to kiss her. “I want to…” His hands hover over her, and Rey nods, encouraging him to keep going.

Poe’s thumbs spread her open, and Rey stares down at him, watching his reaction. It’s a little disorienting, to have someone staring at a region of her body she’s usually associated with going to the bathroom, but Poe’s pupils are wider than she’s ever seen them, the rich, russet brown entirely swallowed by black, and it’s that knowledge that makes her breathe deeply and wait for him to act.

“Gods help me,” Poe whispers, shifting so he’s leaning on his forearms. “You’re so fucking gorgeous.” Rey snorts, disbelieving, and Poe’s eyes flick up to hers. They’re burning, and it makes her breath catch in her throat. “You don’t believe me? Let me try and prove it to you. I’m going to touch you, here, now, with your permission.”

“You definitely have it,” Rey says enthusiastically.

His finger gently strokes the length of her slit, and Rey bucks into the contact, gasping. His finger moves up and down, over and over again, until she swears she sees constellations behind her eyes. “Now, I want to kiss you here. Tell me if that’s okay.”

Nodding is all she thinks she can handle doing right now, but when Poe doesn’t move, she manages to whisper, “Yes.” Poe grins again, and leans in slowly, so fucking slowly. The heat of his mouth against her is unbelievable, and Rey needs more, immediately. “Poe!” She says, voice higher-pitched than normal, dragging out the vowels of his name.

“Rey,” he teases her, pulling away slightly. Rey tries to shift her hips towards him again, but one of his arms comes to pin her pelvis down to the mattress. “It isn’t a race, Sunshine. Let me take my time with you.” It’s the pleading tone of his voice that encourages her to stay still and be patient. He looks so kriffing eager to do this, and Rey wonders how long he’s wanted to do this. The thought that he’s maybe wanted her for a while, just like she’s wanted him, makes the heat rise, and a pulse of _something_ rocks through her core.

“Kriff,” Poe moans. “Oh, kriffing hells, Rey.” He nuzzles into her, something she didn’t ever think would feel good, his stubble slightly scratching at her inner thighs, and when he opens his mouth against her this time, his tongue curls out and strokes along _everything._

“Poe!” Rey shrieks, her hands going to his hair. “Oh, sorry!” she lets him go immediately, but Poe shakes his head.

“Leave ‘em there,” he says hoarsely, flicking his eyes up to hers, but not really pulling away from where she’s hot and wet and ready for him. His breath puffs across her entrance, and she whines. “Please, Sunshine. And gods, don’t hold back. Be as loud as you want.”

“Okay— _Poe!”_ Rey yelps his name again, as her boyfriend dives in with an intense enthusiasm. He licks into her, his thumb still resting on her clit, and Rey whimpers and moans and does a number of things  a Jedi certainly shouldn’t, her hands tugging on his hair. It makes him groan, and that feels nice too, which she wouldn’t have expected, but she wouldn’t have expected any of this.

“Can you,” Rey pants, awkwardly, because she needs something else: “Can you…take your shirt off? Please? I’ll take mine off.”

Poe’s shirt is off and in the corner of the room before she can blink. Rey laughs, and Poe does too, and she sits up to pull her tunic off, chucking it to the corner as well.

Poe doesn’t laugh, now, and instead he stares at her, eyes wide. Rey smiles at him, blushing at the sight of her arousal on his face, and Poe shakes his head abruptly before diving back in to suck on her clit, his finger coming to stroke her entrance.

“Can I please finger you?” He asks, pulling away enough to ask.

“I might have to do it if you don’t,” Rey warns him, and that makes him groan, again. His finger is longer than hers, and wider, and Rey whimpers at the pressure of it inside her.

“Relax, Sunshine,” Poe murmurs to her. “Relax, love.” Rey nods and puts her head back on the bed, willing her muscles to unlock. Poe returns to kiss her clit leisurely.

“So beautiful,” he whispers after a few moments. Rey’s been mewling and writhing on his bed, so she doubts that, but he sounds so sure of himself, and she isn’t really in the mood to argue, for once. “Are you ready for another?”

“Yes,” Rey gasps. At this point, she’d probably say yes to whatever he suggested; he seems to be very good at everything, anything, all of this.

Soon, she’s arching off the bed again, as Poe finds a spot inside of her she’s only ever really theorized about in the past, never able to get the right angle before.

“Poe!” She screams. She worries, briefly, that someone on base will overhear them, but then she’s screaming louder, when Poe grins rakishly and leans in, hair in his eyes, to suck on her clit once, twice, pulsing against her, tongue flicking out every now and then, until Rey’s hurling into Hyperspace, sans-ship, and he’s the only thing in the galaxy.

“Was that okay?” He asks her, suddenly next to her on the bed. At some point, he must have climbed up next to her and adjusted them so they’re lying side by side, one of his arms draped around her stomach.

“Mmhm,” Rey says, stretching happily. “Now, are we going to do something about that?”

**

Rey-from-Jakku is pointing at his very obvious, very erect cock, and Poe can’t think straight. He couldn’t really think straight before, not seconds after watching her fall apart, his fingers inside her, his mouth on her. Gods, he thinks he might have died and been accepted into the heavens – and he can’t think that, no, not after he almost lost her, gods, she could have _died,_ he could have lost her forever, he needs to tell her, soon, how precious she is to him, how much he loves her – and fuck, she’s still waiting for an answer.

“We don’t have to,” he tells her honestly. “I can take care of it myself, or not at all, if you want me to keep holding you.”

“I want you to fuck me,” Rey shrugs, looking unbothered by the bluntness of the statement. Poe blushes for both of them, and nods.

He’s definitely interested in that.

“Pants?” Rey asks, laughing. Her own leggings are in the corner, and she’d ripped off her breast band with her tunic, and he’s the bantha-hole still sitting in his pants, so he undoes them quickly, tugging them and his underwear off his hips, and kicks them almost all the way off, grumbling when he has to sit up slightly to yank them off his ankles.

“Eager?” Rey’s smiling at him, softly, still blissed out, and Poe kisses her sweetly.

“We don’t have to,” he says, quietly. “You’re sure?”

“I’ve been sure,” Rey tells him, and that makes the raging doubt in his chest calm slightly, the idea that she wants this too.

Poe nods, and then asks, “You or me on top?”

Rey wrinkles her nose. “You,” she decides. “Because I’m a little worn out from what you just did. I can go on top later, anyway. I want to ride you while I fuck you, at some point.” Kriff. Yeah. They’re definitely going to do that, in anyway she wants to make that happen.

Still, the lady made her choice, so Poe kisses her again, slowly, the way he promised, and carefully maneuvers himself until he’s cradled in her hips again, his hand gently pushing her knees apart, spreading her thighs so he can fit.

Before he knows it, his cock his lined up with her entrance; he doesn’t even have to touch himself, he’s harder than he’s ever been, he thinks, leaking and throbbing with how badly he wants to be inside her.

Poe kisses her, again, because he always wants to kiss her. “Ready?” He grabs his cock and slides it into position, dragging the head over her swollen clit more than once after he hears how it makes her whimper.

“Yes,” Rey says, nodding rapidly. “Yes, Poe, very ready. Are you?” She looks suddenly concerned.

He exhales a shaky laugh, the heat already overwhelming him. “So fucking ready, sweetheart.” She still looks worried, so he asks, “What’s on your mind?” He releases his cock momentarily in order to rest his forearms on either side of her, looking into her face for a sign of discomfort, a sign that maybe she’s just saying she’s okay with what they’re about to do.

“I’m sorry if I’m not good at this,” Rey tells him, her hand cupping his jaw.

“What?” Poe stares at her, dumbfounded. “Sweetheart, you’re literally good at everything.” Rey doesn’t look any less self-conscious, so he ducks down to kiss her nose, sweetly. “There’s honest-to-the-gods no way you could be bad at this, Sunshine.”

“I just…I know you’ve got a lot more experience than I do, and I don’t want to mess it up, because ideally I’d like to do this more than once, and you mean a lot to me, but I understand if it’s a one-time thing for you, and—”

Poe’s shaking his head, frantically, which stops her ramble. “Sunshine,” and it’s agony, how much her confession shocks his system. “ _Rey_ , this isn’t a one-time thing. Gods.”

Rey smiles at him, still unsure, and Force, this is not the best time to say this, not when the head of his cock is nestled against her burning heat, threatening to make his eyes roll up into his head, but he’s never, ever been one for restraint, and he’s spent the last, maddening six months pretending that he didn’t want her, that he didn’t feel this way –

“I love you,” he tells her, a tear coming out of his eye, and forming a hot trail down his cheek. Rey’s thumb strokes it away, tentatively. “I’ve been in love with you for months, Rey, this – this means so much to me, sweetheart, you have no idea.”

“No one’s ever told me they loved me before,” Rey says, shyly, sadly. That makes Poe cry harder, and they go back to kissing, his erection forgotten as he tries to press how much he cares about her into the kiss, his mouth slotting over hers perfectly, like he was made for this, like he was made for her.

Soon the heat’s unbearable again, and he manages to shift all of his weight back onto his forearms, wanting to make this as easy as possible for her. “This is uh –”

“It’s going to hurt,” Rey shrugs, and runs her hands along his shoulders, and then down the length of his arms. “Rose told me. It’s okay, flyboy, want you inside me.” She wraps her fingers around his locked elbows and shifts her hips impatiently, his cock slipping back down to where it needs to be: and Poe’s gonna come right here, right now, untouched, no effort. Poe recites Beebee’s owner’s manual to himself to block the urge to go off immediately.

He bites his lip and looks Rey in the eyes, praying that she won’t look away, that she’ll keep looking at him, as he takes his cock in his right hand and lines it up completely with her entrance, pushing against the mattress with his left hand to give himself a better angle.

“Okay,” Poe murmurs. “Okay, we’re going to take our time, Sunshine.” The head slips in, just barely, and the heat, gods, the heat of her makes him close his eyes, savoring the feeling as he groans uncontrollably. He pushes his hips forward slightly, opening his eyes so he can gauge Rey’s reaction, so he can check for even the slightest flicker of pain.

She’s staring at him calmly, smiling at him so peacefully it could be a benediction, and her hands come up to cup both his cheeks. Poe’s still sliding in carefully, and he meets resistance, and he takes a deep breath, knowing that what’s going to come next will most likely be a little unpleasant, if not worse, for his partner. “Okay,” he says, and it’s more for his benefit. “Okay, here we go.”

“Poe?” Rey says, sweetly. Poe freezes in his movement, where he’s been gearing up to push the rest of the way in, past the tightness.

“Yeah?”

Poe’s definitely going to lose it, his self-control or his dignity, when Rey’s small hand traces his necklace, coming to a stop at the ring he wears on it; she tugs him down, fingers twisting in the chain, and gods, he goes down so easy, so she can kiss him like she wants to. It’s as sweet as it is filthy, his cock half inside her, her tongue flitting out to run along his bottom lip, her fingers tangled around his necklace, around the ring that he’s more than once daydreamed of her wearing, shining bright and silver on her slender finger.

Rey releases him and settles her head back on the pillows; one hand goes to scratch along his scalp, and he resists the urge to close his eyes against the incredible feeling. Poe breathes deeply and begins to move his hips forward, but –

“I think I love you,” Rey says, staring over his shoulder, and then back into his eyes. Poe’s hips stutter in shock, because he had to have imagined that, he couldn’t have heard correctly, she couldn’t mean – “I know it doesn’t mean a whole lot because I’ve never…never really had a chance to love anyone, but I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you.”

“Oh,” Poe says, completely knocked off-guard by the confession. “Oh, fuck.” Without realizing it, he slides the rest of the way in, and Rey sighs happily. “Oh fucking hells, Rey, Rey, Sunshine.” He drops his head to her shoulder and breathes erratically. It’s almost too much, being entirely buried inside of her, her walls fluttering around him experimentally, her nose wrinkled in that way that he finds so adorable (one of the first things he noticed about her, fell in love with), _and_ she – she loves him?

“Yeah, I love you, don’t sound so surprised, Dameron.” Rey laughs, and then they both freeze, entirely. “Didn’t you – you didn’t say that out loud?” Rey asks, eyes wide.

“No,” Poe whispers. “No, I didn’t.”

“Oh,” Rey’s face flushes. “Oh…”

“I love you,” Poe says, excitedly. _Gods, I love you._

“Then fucking move,” Rey laughs again, bright and clear, her nails scratching at his back. “Come on, Commander, while the night is young. I’d like to do this a few more times before the sun comes up.”

“You’re on,” Poe laughs, pulling out slowly and then snapping his hips in, luxuriously, because he can take his sweet time and make this good for her, just like he said.

He pulls back out, halfway, testing her limits, still watching her face for a sign of pain, but she keeps smiling at him, and when he’s push-pulled back in and out of her a few more times, she begins to sigh, lower and deeper and louder every time he thrusts back into her. Poe counts the numbers of the stars in the nearest constellations, trying to control his hips, trying to go slow, not shove himself into her, lose himself in her the way he wants to, because this is very, very much about Rey, and not about him, and –

“That’s not true, this is about both of us, Poe, it’s not just about me,” Rey whispers, tugging on his curls. Poe groans at the sensation, which makes her grin wickedly. “Oh, you like that, flyboy?” Her teasing tone is also enough to make his toes curl, and she looks positively gleeful at this new wealth of information. She kisses his neck filthily, and Poe is going to whimper, gods, she’s never going to think he’s cool again. “Never thought you were cool, Dameron, but I always thought you were wonderful.”

“Oh fuck,” Poe groans. Yeah, that’s it, he’s gone, he’s done for. Rey’s giggling as he speeds up slightly, just slightly, because he’s out of his mind with pleasure, but he’ll die before he causes her any pain, and then he shouts her name and probably fifteen curses in Yavinese, Basic, and Huttese as he spills inside of her.

He pulls out, wincing at the drag, kissing her desperately the whole time. _I love you,_ he thinks, praying she can still hear him. _I love you so fucking much, you have no idea._

“I have some idea,” Rey laughs, gesturing between their bodies, where his come is already cooling between them.

Then, Poe remembers. “You didn’t finish,” he groans, mortified. He flops down on the bed, on his back, still panting slightly. “Sorry, Sunshine.”

“So what if I didn’t finish.” Her small hand begins to trace distracting circles on his bare chest, and Poe shivers when her fingers brush against the ring that feels like it’s burning against his skin. “I thought you said it wasn’t a race?”

“Yeah,” Poe mutters, covering his face with his arm. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“I’m sure you’ll help me get there eventually,” Rey sighs dramatically. “But if you’re too tired, I do know that I’m very good at getting myself there.”

“What.” Poe’s upright, on his side, looking at her in less than three seconds. He thinks his eyes might fall out of his head. “No, I definitely want to watch that.”

Rey shrugs, hand already slipping down, bottom lip caught between her teeth. Poe cups her jaw, and uses his thumb to release her lip. “Let me bite that for you, from now on,” he tells her playfully. Rey whimpers in response, and it’s obvious why – her hand has found her clit, and she’s toying with it while looking at him, doe eyes wide and trusting, and kriff, they’re going to have to list her in his official paperwork as ‘cause of death’.

“Aw fuck,” Poe groans. “Maker, sweetheart. Just – let me? Please?”

Rey removes her hand and grips the sheets. She nods ferociously. “Mouth or hand, sunshine?” He asks her.

‘Hand,” Rey chooses quickly. “Hand, because I want to kiss you.”

“That’s a fucking deal,” Poe sighs.

“Sorry,” Rey whispers, when his hand slips down and finds her wet, so fucking wet, from herself but also from him. “It’s a little … messy.”

“Don’t apologize Sunshine. Sex is messy,” Poe shrugs. He gathers up some of his own come, gathered at the corner of her entrance, and slides it around, dragging his fingers up to her clit and circling slowly. He groans low in his throat. “Fuck, that’s hot.” He stares down, mesmerized, almost forgetting why Rey wanted him to use his hand in the first place.

“Is it?” Rey wrinkles her nose at him, and gods, he’s a goner again. Poe leans down to kiss her neck. “Sex is a little weird, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” Poe agrees cheerfully, popping the ‘p.’ “But as long as everyone’s happy and safe and consents, it doesn’t fucking matter what you get up to.” He presses another kiss under her jaw.

“Kiss me for real, flyboy,” Rey scolds him, seconds before her back arches sharply and she gasps, clearly liking the pattern he’s established.

 _Your wish, my command._ Rey hums happily. “It’s nice, to be able to hear you like this,” she says shyly.

“Do you think you know why that is?” Poe asks curiously before ducking down to kiss her, his finger still slipping over her clit, messy and hot and enough to get him hard again. They kiss for more than a few seconds, Poe relishing the sweet gasps she makes into his mouth every so often. Eventually, they break apart for air.

“Probably because I love you,” Rey answers his earlier question cheerfully, which is an incredible juxtaposition to her flushed skin, her dilated pupils, the way her body squirms against his sheets. Rey’s sweet and cheerful and curious to the end, even when he’s trying to drive her wild, and he – he didn’t ever think he could _feel_ this much about one person.

“It probably helps that I love you, too,” Poe points out, meaning it, more than he’s ever meant anything. He ducks his head down, ears burning, and slips two fingers in to the knuckle. Poe fucks her with them slowly, twisting his wrist to drag his fingertips up and down the inside of her walls, his thumb resting on her clit and tapping lightly.

“That,” Rey gasps. “Oh, that, do that –”

“Faster?” Poe asks, genuinely curious. “Slower? Harder?”

“Harder.” Rey nods, ferociously, her hand grasping his wrist. “Harder, harder, harder, please, harder.” Poe rubs his thumb more vigorously against her swollen clit, and thrusts his fingers against a spot inside her that has her back freezing in an arch off the bed. Her fingers tighten around his forearm.

Her cheeks are flushed impossibly red, sweat dampening her hairline; her eyes are clenched shut, and her mouth is open wide in surprise.

“Fuck,” Poe groans. “Oh, fucking gods, Rey, baby, you’re so beautiful, so perfect, so good,” he kisses her neck, and continues to thrust into her with his fingers. “You gonna come for me, Sunshine?”

Rey nods, and he knows she will, understanding perfectly well what the clenching around his fingers indicates. “Please come for me, sweetheart, wanna see you fall apart, wanna hear you scream my name.” Poe isn’t above begging, never has been.

“Poe,” Rey gasps, and it isn’t a shout, it’s not even loud, but fuck, no one’s ever said his name like that, and he’ll never forget it, never wants to hear it said another way again. “Poe, I –”

“Want to come?” He finishes the statement when she can’t. “I got you, sweetheart, just let go, I’ve got you, I’ll catch you.”

Rey shakes her head, tears leaking out of her eyes, and he almost stops, but she hasn’t asked him to. It’s normal to be emotional during sex, he rationalizes, hells, he’s cried three times tonight. “No, Poe – I—” He kisses her collarbone sloppily when she pauses again. “I love you,” she manages to say, and how in the hells does she keep doing this, how does she keep surprising him, catching him off guard?

She comes with a sob then, and Poe works her through it, kissing her neck and whispering to her how much he loves her (a lot), how long he’s loved her (since forever), how long he’ll love her (always).

The sex was incredible, mind-blowing, and he’ll probably remember it when he’s nothing more than stardust. But it’s the after that really gets him, when Rey-from-Jakku curls up in his arms like a happy Lotho-cat and lets him brush his hand up and down her back. The best part of his night, no, his life, is when she tucks that adorable, perfect nose into his collarbone and digs her small, bony fingers into his chest and burrows into his side, sighing sweetly as she begins to doze off.

Poe loves having sex with Rey, sure, but it’s this that’s gearing up to be the death of him, the minutes he spends before sleep where he gets to just hold the woman he loves in his arms.

“Falling asleep?” He asks her after the comfortable silence has settled around their naked bodies even more than the blanket has. She huffs a drawn-out breath into his chest.

“Yep. You?”

“Mhm.” Poe closes his eyes and twists slightly, so his chin can rest in her hair and his arm can drape across her body. “Race you.” He presses a kiss into her forehead.

“Nerfherder,” Rey snorts. “Love you.”

“Yeah. Love you, too.”

It doesn’t really matter who falls asleep first. What matters is that they’re finally together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> Still am so awkward at writing smut, sorry!!!
> 
> Also, on Thursday evening, I was like, I'll write a cute ~10K word, 5+1 story about Poe and Rey racing each other.
> 
> Yeah. It's Monday night, we're 32k words in, and we landed squarely in SinTown.
> 
> My apologies, fam.
> 
>  
> 
> (ps there's definitely an epilogue outlined on my computer right now, someone take my keyboard away from me)

**Author's Note:**

> *** = time skip  
> POV alternates depending on the chapter.


End file.
